Lessons

Lesson Info

Class Introduction

So, some of you have heard me speak before. Those of you who haven't might not know, I like to start with something a little funny. So today's joke: what kind of bagel can fly? It's a plain bagel. (laughter) Okay, okay, we can only go up from here, okay? I think I am the last real boxing fan in the whole wide world. I'm a massive Mohammed Ali fan, and one of my favorite quotes from Mohammed Ali is, "If they can make penicillin out of moldy bread, "they can sure make something out of you." I think that there's a lot of potential in a lot of people. We just need to find what it is that we can do in our professional lives to be successful at. In all the genres of photography, there's certain things that I'm not going to be amazing at, and there's certain things that I've found over the years are topics and genres that I really succeed at. So the first thing before we get into going over all of the things we're going to cover in this class, I'm really, really excited to share this with you...

. I did a lot of research and prep for it, and I can tell you honestly, I could not find a place where you're gonna find this much content in one location. But before we start, the real topic that I'm sure you all are curious about: Why do they call you The Body? (audience chuckles) Okay, so true story, this happened way back, this was probably 11 or 12 years ago. I was walking through a mall with my girlfriend then now wife, and we walked past a Victoria's Secret. And there was this giant six foot by eight foot billboard banner thing in their window, and it had Heidi Klum on there in a bra, and it said, "A bra so sexy they named it after me." And I said, "That's weird, they have like a Heidi Klum bra?" Like, that's weird that they have like a signature line for Heidi Klum. And my wife said, "No, no, no, she was so hot, "they used to call her The Body, "and it's the Body Bra." And I was feeling pretty confident that day, and I went back home and I hopped on Facebook, and I decided I was gonna change my name to Matthew The Body. But you have to remember at this time, Facebook was super, super limited. Most of the people in this room couldn't have had a Facebook account. It was held only for certain colleges, groups weren't really a thing, fan pages weren't really out there, the commercialization of Facebook hadn't really existed. So I put it on there just as a joke. I'm in my early 20s, and I'm shooting a ton of weddings. So I'd go and I'd shoot a wedding, and everyone would go, "Oh, I can't wait to see that photo." And I'd say, "Oh, go post it on Facebook, "follow me, and you'll see it later." And people would go, "What's your name?" Well, if I say Matthew Kemmet Mueller, you aren't gonna remember it, you're not gonna spell it right, you might even mispronounce it, (laughs) I know how to pronounce your name! (laughs) I know you know! I know you know! But it's a tricky one. It's intimidating. So there's a great book I think everyone should read. It's "48 Laws of Power" by Robert Greene. It's an easy read. You can read it in a day. "48 Laws of Power," they go through all these things that kings and tsars and presidents and successful businessmen have done, these 48 common laws. And law number six is that you need to court attention at all costs. When I changed my name to Matthew The Body, what happened was I started getting a lot of attention for that. I'd meet people, I'd say, "Follow me on Facebook," and they'd go, "What's your name," and I'd go, "Matthew the Body," and they'd laugh, and I'd say, "Why is that funny," and then it would be even more memorable. So I ended up getting a lot of people that would follow me, and these were all bridesmaids and groomsmen from weddings I shot, which accidentally became a genius grassroots marketing campaign, where I started booking all of these bridesmaids and groomsmen from weddings that I already shot, because I was constantly in front of them on social media. Now that I've stepped away from doing as many weddings as I used to, it's just a little poke, a little giggle I like to take at myself that we don't take things too seriously, and again it's something that I just want to be memorable. I don't want to be someone you forget meeting. So, if you guys are looking for me, you can check out our websites. We got www.k-photography.com, we have a separate one for sports, it's k-sportsphotos.com, I typed that up wrong. Then we have k-schoolphotos, and Facebook, Matthew The Body, Instagram Matthew The Body, Snapchat Matthew The Body, email me@matthewthebody. (audience laughs) Got that? All right, so I own and operate Kemmet Mueller Photography. It's what I would consider as a traditional family-run studio, which unfortunately is something that is kind of dying throughout America. We are the last commercial location studio in the school district that we operate in. Everyone else is home-based businesses, which is fine. It's just kind of the brick and mortar all things to all people in your community studio seems to be disappearing. We are a traditional studio with multiple staff members. We photograph around 900 sessions a year, so we're busy. We photograph babies, which I'm super awkward with babies. I've never had one, so the joke I like to make with babies is like, I look at them, if you came over to my house with your 98 Ford Mustang, and you were like, "Let's get in and go for a ride," I'm like, "Yeah," 'cause if I break it, I can probably fix it, or afford to get it fixed. But if you come over with a Lamborghini, I'm gonna be like, "That's a nice car." I don't wanna break your car, so I won't touch your car. I look at babies like Lamborghinis. I don't wanna break your baby, so I don't wanna touch it. (audience chuckles) But, we photograph a ton. I love kids. I'm merely shaped like a man. On the inside, still a boy. So we have a lot of fun. Toss Grandma in for some shots. Here's one. Know how to make a bunch more money off your family stuff? They always come in, they'll bring in the kids, they say, "We just want one good group shot." Take your time, photograph all possible combinations. That's what drives our averages up big time for family stuff. We were talking about this earlier. I always photograph, not just the whole family several ways, but I do a picture of mom with kids, dad with kids, kids alone, mom and dad together, all the kids individually, and then they come in for an in-person sales session, and I'm kind of a jerk if I don't buy a picture of my wife with my kids. And she's kind of a jerk if she doesn't buy one back. So, it gives a lot of options. I'm surprised, too, at how many people come in for family photos, and they're like, "Oh, yeah, "we haven't had a picture since our wedding." They're married like 20 years, and it'll be the first professional photograph they have. It's amazing to me. Mom and kids, I photographed all three of their kids for high school senior portraits. Just really simple, clean, easy photography. Lot of seniors. That kid was so serious during our set, he was like the most serious high school guy ever. We have kids that come in that are athletes that we wanna incorporate some of their sports images into their senior stuff. This is my cousin's kid, Katelyn Kemmet Mueller, she's the reason why I don't pop up on Twitter as much when you search Kemmet Mueller, 'cause she's everywhere, she's a softball like maniac. She's got a full ride scholarship, she's incredible. Just really nice stuff, and of course, we do volume sports. Hockey team, youth wrestling, and my baseball team, which I jump in every year for photos, because I'm a nerd and they also get free posters because I like them, they wear my name on their jersey. In the last three out of the four years, they were the champions in their division. I was kind of mad at the guys that weren't. I was like, "Come on, we had a legacy going. "You guys blew it." No, and so we jump in. We do a lot of banners, where we talked about banners. So this is my studio. It's in a strip mall in Deephaven. Deephaven is an itty-bitty tiny little thing near Minnetonka. It's a five-storefront studio. We occupy two of the top storefronts, and then we have the entire basement. So this is our gallery when you walk in, back here, that's where we work, that's the workstation, client pickup. That's our upstairs camera room. We photograph a lot of adapted sports. Adapted sports are cognitively and physically impaired kids. So they are, it's interesting because the schools that we photograph are so big. They're 800 to 1,000 kids per grade, and as a result, most kids at those schools are one sport athletes. So we get kids that just play hockey, just play football, just play baseball, because the school's so competitive. If you were at a school with maybe 200 kids, you could play all of them, but at 1,000 it's hard. So, adapted sports kids, though, we find that if you play one adapted sport, you play all of them. So these kids are kids that we see five or six times throughout the year. As a result, we photograph a lot of kids that are wheelchair-bound, probably more than the average studio. So we have an upstairs area that we would use for head shots, executive head shots, and then if kids are wheelchair-bound, we bring them up there. Downstairs dressing room. That's my dog Bailey, she's the best dog in the whole wide world. I bring her to work every single day. We always can tell our favorite clients, 'cause our favorite clients like the dog. (audience chuckles) You don't like the dog, it's gonna be a rough go. That's our sales room. We do everything on a 60-inch TV. Tons of samples, show what you wanna sell. And that's our downstairs studio. It's like 2800 square feet of shooting space. So we have a lot of room. We've made a temporary wall so we have a corridor to get back to our lab. So we actually have a Noritsu D1005. It's a dry lab, so it's ink-based with awesome quality. I'll show you guys some of the stuff that we print and produce on that. And this is one of the parts of my studio that I am super proud of, and I think is really unique, and it doesn't really show that well on camera. (laughs) It's not as cool as an awesome shooting bay, but I'm really proud of it. And then of course, our production area, and we sell frames. We sell a ton of frames, so it's our little framing area. So let's talk about what we're gonna cover in this class. Well, we just did an introduction to my studio. I wanna talk to you about how we got into sports photography. We're gonna go over the different types of accounts that we photograph. We're gonna go over knowing your numbers, making packages and pricing them, designing and printing order forms, selling prepaid, online, and on location. We're gonna talk about transporting your gear. We're gonna talk about shoot day prep. We're gonna talk about developing a good shooting flow, staffing for the big day, converting high volume clients into traditional clients. We're gonna do customer service, understanding your clients, but wait, there's more. We're also gonna go over, I'm gonna demo a team and individual shoot. We're gonna demo banner shooting. We're gonna go through all of the post processing, how we process our orders, and order stuff through a lab, if we don't do in-house printing, and how and what, where to get your products, and giving back to your community, as well as making yourself irreplaceable.