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The Power of Print

Now we're gonna talk about the power of print. If we don't believe how important print is, our clients are gonna believe it. Right. So we have to truly believe in the power of print. And just like I talked about before, Steven Covey begin with the end in mind. So we're building an iceberg. So everything we do underneath the water is what creates our success on top of the water. Right? So they say, you know, iceberg, just the tip of the iceberg and something like 80 or 90% of an iceberg underwater. You never see it. All right, so it's the same thing that goes into creating albums and and selling albums and discovering your client's story. So that's really based on three principles, right? So the power of print, which will be discussing next storytelling, shifting from shooting individual images and then shifting to creating stories around our clients, right? It doesn't matter if you're a wedding photographer, you're shooting high school seniors. You're shooting families, even boudoir. Y...

ou're telling a story of that, that person, that couple, that family. And if we can tell their story, then we're building that huge iceberg underneath that creates our success on top pricing communication. How do we price our albums? How do we communicate the cost of them? How do we communicate? Uh, the value of getting people to start with an album and end up with a bigger album, Right? How do we go from selling the minimum 20 or 30 page album that we're selling to being like Charmy Penna Patel, who charm opinion photography, who usually maxes out two volumes of her albums from Renaissance albums, toe almost every client right there full. She's used all the pages up right, and that means for some, for Renaissance albums. Their battery book has 120 pages. So that's 240 pages, right for a multi day Indian wedding, right? So it's incredible what you can do. And the clients are happy to order these albums because it's their story, right? Who doesn't love their story. And if we do all of this, well, then we'll sell bigger and better albums. So I'd like you to take a moment to think about a print off of your parents or grandparents that has meaning to you. All right, so, uh, just thinking mind does anybody have one they'd like to share? Just that. They love of their family. Don't be shy. My great grandmother, who was from Italy with her and all her sister's a little, you know, braids and loops or whatever. And it's black and white and they just it just takes you back. It shows their whole, like the whole family, and that's good. And you have that you have a digital file of it anywhere. Nothing on anybody else. Like to share parents wedding photo in the backyard of their parents with my dad and his eight brothers and five sisters. And it's black and white. And it's a simple little caper photograph. No file of it. No, it's Yeah, we don't need that. Yeah, yeah. You know what? Every we're all concerned about digital detectives and digital files. But all of these prints that we have that have meaning to us Does anybody know where the negatives are? Who cares, right. The prince gonna last 203 100 years. It's about the negatives. So I'd like to share Ah! Ah, photo that was discovered in my family. And this is my great great uncle Stephen Gurney. So my mom and her sister found this in a a box. There's just this huge box of old photos that are hundreds of years old and that I didn't even know about. And, of course, I've only loved photography for 2025 years, and they just recently showed me these prints. Come on, guys, it's in here. So, uh, they found this this print about a year and 1/2 ago. And my mom showed me and I was like, Wow, this is really cool. Is that it's a cool print, um, was taken during World War. Check out the lighting on that. Isn't that incredible? So I was, uh, one day I was just looking at it. And, you know, the studio name is on their, uh, tiger for your nest and the address. So I googled it, and it's still in business. Yeah. So, uh, and one of my beliefs is that prince keep stories alive, right? So we get this print and, uh, you know, Stephen Curry, Mary, uh, Gurney Walser's brother, and then a different handwriting Says was killed in action shortly after the photo was taken. Right? So all year, I've been telling people this story, right? Incredible story. WPP I speech gave, you know, told about this story. And then two weeks after I give a speech in front of all these people about this, my mom text me is like, Oh, he didn't die in World War One. His brother died. So somebody made a mistake, right? But because of this print were able to keep this story alive. And actually, this summer, I'm gonna travel to the studio and have my portrait taken there. That gives me chills. So, you know, truly committing to print and what print means to us can really transfer that passion from us to our clients and not only print but the stories behind it. So this is my mom and my dad on their wedding day in Reno. You were just there. Yeah, I'm having Jason check and see if that that hotel still in business because we'd like to go back and visit that. Ah, this is the first picture with me in it. Yeah, And then here's the other really good snapshot from the wedding. Obviously, the wedding's over there. Super happy. I think this is the most relaxed smile my dad has ever had in the photo. Just like woohoo. Well done. Thanks. Uh, but what I'm thinking about these pictures of my parents, um they're going to be celebrating their 47th anniversary, I think this year. And what? I'm looking at this as a child, right? I don't I could care less about some epic shot somewhere, all lit up big. Whatever. What I want to know is all the slices between there and the time, right? The picture with, you know, their parents, brothers and sisters. And, you know, my grand parents, like, that's what I really care about. So as we're shooting our clients, right, we're telling their story. But we're telling it for someone, right? We're telling it for someone and often times that someone doesn't exist yet. Or maybe just started. Yeah, I was in high school when I finally did the math, and I was, like, Definitely Yeah, yeah. And he's like, I was Let's let's go play football. Yeah, What you gonna do? All right, So think about what print can symbolize your story for yourself and how important that is. All right. And since this is a class, I'm gonna give you homework. Jim, you have homework to because I know you shoot. So find a print that symbolizes your belief in print, right and displayed in your studio. You know, put it on your desk. Put it somewhere just so that it's a constant reminder to both you and your clients about the importance of print and what that means going forward. So in addition to the power of print, in all of the emotions, we have it. So is anybody analytical in here? I know that John's wife loves spreadsheets, right? Any science nerds in here? This is like one. He's the non photographer, but there's a zai started researching print. There's a lot of science comparing, uh, how humans interact with digital versus print. And from the research I've done, digital is scientifically inferior to print in many ways, and a lot of it can really help how we communicate with their clients and also how we sell ourselves as business people. So they hook people up to the machine, get the brain waves to seal the colors, lighting up in in your brain when you do different things when they're doing the science experience. So they found that the part of your brain that deals with memory lights up way more when you touch a physical print versus looking at the digital image of the same exact photo, our memory lights up the part of our brain that deals with memory. Additionally, the part of a brain that deals with emotion lights up when we hold the print versus just looking at it on a screen, right. That's why people love toe, look at an album and flip through that album and touch it right. And this is where the rubber hits the pavement. The part of our brain that deals with desire lights up right when you go when you go shopping for a car and you walk into the show room with the very first thing they want you to dio test drive. Yep, even before the test drive, they want you to sit in the car. Why did they want you to sit in the car? Because when you touch something that's physical as humans, we want that we desire it right? Especially got the nice leather like turned up the sound right. The smell right. The more senses we can activate, the better right and our sense of touch is much more emotional than our sense of sight. So if we're just looking at a visual image versus actually touching and feeling that digital image much more important, right, and that's why we have to communicate the value of print. And that's why we have to show our clients print right? We gotta have stuff up on the wall you got have albums that you hand them and touch and feel Right. When I was running a studio and a mom would come in on a scene for a senior shoot, right, I would walk up to the wall and I would take a canvas off the wall and hand it to her so she could touch and hold it right. And there's a study I read, and this is really interesting because there's this big push towards digital textbooks, right? Well, I got some bad news for you. So in one study, students actually tested 40% better from printed textbooks than versus studying from additional textbook. They don't quite know why yet, but part of it is you can flip through paper. You can You don't have to look at it in order to complete through. There's the three D dimension, Something about being able to hold and look at different angles and how we interact with printed material versus digital So digital is actually less valuable, right? It's scientifically less valuable as a physical item, but also it's less valuable for us as a business owner. And it's less valuable for our clients and their Children, their grandchildren, right? We all know clients everybody. If they get a disk, they said they're gonna print the images. Who does it? But you actually have that experience, right? I do. Yeah. So? So last night at dinner, you were telling us that your, uh your wedding photos you got on a disk and they're still sitting on the disks. I'm wearing a door, right? Exactly. Yeah. Did you print any of them? Very few. Yeah, right. So that's sad. So go. By the way, go print them all because disks our organic in the lose their readability so they will disappear. I always tell my plans. Facebook can close tomorrow. You will never be able to access those images again, let alone I could never find an image on their from more than six months ago. So, you know, that's why they're doing the memories now, Because people can't find their images. Who here, uh, prints up fancy USB sticks with their logo on it for their clients anymore? Yeah. Go through those in the garbage anymore. Go through them all in the garbage. Because when we present those two when we present those fancy USB sticks to our clients with our logos on them were telling them what we value. But my USB thing includes 30 actual prints included in the box to show them the value of print. What I believe is just present them the prince and then sentiment of really ugly Lincoln and email to download photos. So we want to communicate no value to digital, no value to digital because we want to communicate value in print. So the only thing that has value are the albums, the wall art and the physical prints that they order from us. Everything else has no value from right because it's gonna disappear. Right? And things that disappear don't have value, right? What do we value in the end? We value our family. Uh, right. We value our home and we value the things that keep our family stories alive. Beyond that, there's really not that much. Everybody knows the story, and it's true. It's like, you know, houses on fire. What do you grab? Yeah, get the kids and the wife out the door and then grab the pictures and that was it. Everything else Who cares? And we must communicate. Clients must visualize an album in an emotional way. They must visualize their own album. So one of my friends on Facebook, hey, posted every question. There's this one question. He always asks his clients, and if he forgets to ask this question, his album sales always tank and his question is so My goal today is to tell your story, right? I'm gonna shoot your story and get in an album. So, you know, in five or 10 years, when you're showing your album to your kids, what would you like that story to be? All right, when you sit down with your kids on the couch and you're showing them your wedding album, what do you want that album to include? What story do you want that to tell? And then they tell you, and then you photograph that. And they want that right, Because we're shooting for a client. They tell us what they what's important to them. We make sure we capture that. And then we delivered to that, that to them. And, you know, Steve always tells they'll happily reward you for taking great care of them always. Right? So we've covered a lot of the, like, the science and stuff. So what? What from that really resonates with you? Like, how can this information change how we speak to our clients? Talking about it up front is something that I think we kind of forget. We're just talking about capturing the images up front in which images they want captured up front. I think the fact of talking about where they're gonna put it in their home, or how they're gonna what kind of album they want in that talk, it seems pretty obvious now. Yeah, and and later we're gonna fight Steve separate. Oh, upon Tate on stage, that teaches a program called Intuition to succeed. And that's what it's all about. It's just about asking your clients what's important to them. You talked a lot about, um, the emotion behind a photograph and you mentioned a number of times, and I think a lot of the times when we're interviewing our clients were really focused a lot on the visual, but not so much on the emotion. And I think there's a little bit of a mind shift that needs to happen in that we need to start really focusing on what emotions at Klein's they're going through, because the visual way we're a master of anyway, we can create that. But it's the emotion that we elicit from my client that he's gonna tie them to after troubled exactly, exactly right, because we're capturing a story that's important to them, were literally capturing their emotion on a piece of paper that's gonna be around for hundreds of years. Yeah, you know, just like the print I showed you before of my great great uncle. It's over 100 years old. Holy smokes. It looks so nice. It is so pretty. You've seen it before. Yeah, it's it's beautiful, right? So remember that every time we're designing an album and that's a that's a print that is out in the sun on albums closed from the sun, right? It starts fading in 200 years, you know, So think about that. What you're capturing and putting an album will start to fade in 200 years. How many generations is that? Yeah, right. So this first parts all about the power of print, right? Does everybody have a little bit more emotional about the power of print now? Right, Right. Starting to shift your thinking in the way we want to talk to our clients a little. Right. So now we're gonna talk about storytelling, right? The next part is about storytelling. So one of the things that's photographers, that the very first thing we learned is how to capture an image, right. How to create the images we want to create off camera flash, you know, angles, lenses, all of the technical aspects of how we create that image. And we become ninjas at capturing those moments, right? We always got to be ready for that moment, though. Dad's tearing up. I got to get that moment. But how can we go beyond capturing that one image and then move towards capturing those scenes in a story? Right. So before we move on to the next part of your homework and Everybody has their sheets, right? Right down the science behind print that most resonates with you. Really? You know, talk. Take that information about print and how what most resonates with you and then how are we going to communicate that to our clients?