Longmont Photographer

Beginning in March, 2008, and continuing until November 14, 2008, Kim Balsman of Balsman Photography in Longmont, CO offers families in search of portraits an exciting opportunity: the chance to win a week long vacation to a premier Disney Resort in Orlando, Florida!

Families need only schedule a free consultation with Balsman Photography to enter the sweepstakes for a Disney vacation, 50” Plasma Screen TV, navigation system, PSP, or a $500 American Express gift card. This unique sweepstakes, combined with Balsman Photography’s years of experience and photographic excellence, proves that they put their clients first. Portrait sessions will definitely be more fun with the added possibility of a family vacation to Disney!

Call 303-678-1335, or visit www.balsmanphotography.com for more information about the “Family Destination: Disney” sweepstakes. To enter, visit Balsman Photography at 612 Kimbark St. in Longmont to find out how you can make Disney your family’s next destination.

We recently had a client come back to view their portraits. While they were taking in the images in our Portrait Theater & having some popcorn, they told us about their experience at a department store studio. And it’s not the first time we’ve heard something similar. Our client had gone to a local department store on the spur of a moment to have some family portraits taken. They chose the studio because it was convenient and offered a $20 package. When they went to pick up their portraits, however, they ended up making a $400 purchase. In the same breath, our client tells us that they wished they had known about us before they went to the department store. You see, the portraits were nice, but not fantastic. The family wasn’t all that happy with them, even though they spent more than they originally intended. More than one member of the family had bright spots and blemishes that stood out in their portraits. However, they loved high school senior portraits we had just done for them. They told us how much they appreciated the amount of time we took with them, our cozy studio, and how fantastic their son looked in his portraits. We had taken a great deal of time and put much thought into creating the portraits as well as carefully retouching them after the session.

It’s a story we’ve heard many times before, and actually we’ve heard of some folks who purchase even more. So ask yourself - if you are going to have a family portrait created and you are the kind of person who might end up spending more on the portraits than you originally intended (even if they aren’t the greatest), why not forgo the department store studio all together? Not to knock them at all, they do fill a need. Generally speaking though, for a little more investment and time, you will get more time and attention, a higher quality portrait, a professionally trained and experienced photographer, professional enhancing & retouching, and more at a dedicated professional portrait studio such as ours.

Hey Class of 2009 - guess what’s just around the corner? SENIOR PORTRAIT time!

That’s right. The 2008 Seniors will be graduating soon. That means YOU will soon be the Senior Class!

Now is the time to begin thinking about your senior portraits. Be sure you choose a photography studio that will take time with you to design and create portraits that you will LOVE.

Balsman Photography is Longmont’s preferred studio for senior portraits. We offer only heirloom quality portraits and the only 100% guarantee in Longmont and Boulder.

Visit our website for more details: www.balsmanphotography.com.

Don’t settle for snapshot studios using the same old backdrops and poses in every single session. Go for something truly unique and reflective of who YOU really are!

Session times for 2009 seniors are already being booked. Call or visit our studio today for details on our Senior Open House and our Ford Mustand and Cash prize giveaways!

See you in our studio soon!

Pamela & Shawn Richter from Caught on Film Photography in San Diego have a wonderful article I would like to share with you. They graciously gave me permission to include it here. This is one of the best explanations of the subject I’ve read. Enjoy!

Why are Professional Photographers so expensive?
(This article has been very well received by the photography community, and is now referred to by countless Photography websites, blogs and forums (such as LDPT, ILP and DWF)around the world).

In this digital age where everyone has digital cameras, scanners and home “photo printers”, when people upload their photos to a local drug store website and pick them up a few hours later, we hear this all the time - How in the world do Professional Photographers charge $55 for an 8×10 when they cost just $1.50 at the drug store?

Here’s why.

Simply put, you’re not just paying for the actual photograph, you’re paying for time and expertise. First, let’s look at the actual time involved. If you don’t read this entire page, at least read this first part.

For a two hour portrait session:

- one hour of travel to and from the session
- two hours of shooting
- 30 minutes of setup, preparation, talking to the client etc.
- 30 minutes to load the photos onto a computer (2 - 4 Gb of data)
- 30 minutes to back up the files on an external drive
- 3 - 4 hours of Photoshop time including cropping, contrast, color, sharpening, saving a copy for print and a copy for the internet and backing up the edited photographs
- 2 - 3 hours to talk to the client, answer questions, receive their order and payment, order their prints, receive and verify prints, package prints, schedule shipment and drop package off at Fed Ex.
- For local customers, we also print a set of all of their photos, and meet them at our studio to review the photos and place their order. Meeting and travel time averages 2 hours.

You can see how one two hour session easily turns into more than ten hours of work from start to finish. So when you see a Photographer charging a $200 session fee for a two hour photo shoot, you are not paying them $100 / hour.

For an eight hour wedding:

- I won’t bore you with the details, but an eight hour wedding typically amounts to at least two to three full 40 hour work weeks worth of time. Again, if they are charging you $4,000 for an eight hour wedding, you are not paying them $500 / hour.

Now for the expertise.

Shooting professional photography is a skill, acquired through years of experience. Even though a quality camera now costs under $2,000 taking professional portraits involves much more than a nice camera.

Most Professional Photographers take years to go from buying their first decent camera to making money with their photography. In addition to learning how to use the camera itself, there is a mountain of other equipment involved, as well as numerous software programs used to edit and print photographs, run a website etc.

And let’s not forget that you actually have to have people skills, be able to communicate, make people comfortable in front of the camera - and posing people to make them look their best in a photograph is a skill all by itself.

Think of it this way - the next time you pay $X to get your hair done, a pair of scissors only costs $1.50. But you gladly pay a lot more to hire a Professional.

What about the cheap studios at the mall?

Please don’t compare us to the chain store studios. But if you must, consider all of the time and work that we put into our photographs, compared to what they do. Good luck getting a two hour photo shoot at a chain store. Not to mention they won’t come to the beach! And of course, look at our work compared to theirs. You get what you pay for.

The truth is, most of the mall and chain store studios lose money. In fact, in 2007 Wal-Mart closed 500 of their portrait studios because of the financial drain they were putting on the company. What the chain stores bet on is that you’ll come in for some quick and cheap photos, and while you’re there, you’ll also spend $200 on other things. They don’t have to make money, they are just there to get you in the door.

Conclusion

We hope that those who have taken the time to read this page will have a better understanding of why professional photographs cost so much more than the ones that you get from your local drug store.

I would like to add just a bit to this article.

In addition to the logical answers to the question such as ‘time & expertise’, you are also investing in what is on the paper - the image your photographer creates for you. At our studio, our aim is to create a photograph that you will treasure more every time you see it. We don’t ask our clients to purchase paper of a particular size & grade. Rather, our clients gladly invest in the love & emotion we capture in their portraits.

Here is how I think of the importance of photography. Consider a small painting, a work of art. The last local art work I saw for sale recently was an 11×14 watercolor. Price - $350. It was a good painting, a very pretty scenic. However, it really meant very little to me in comparison to the wall portraits I own of my children. I look at them every day & am so thankful I have these beautiful images, how much it means to me to keep these remembrances of my children. I could race by a painting in a house fire very easily to save my wall portraits. They mean too much to me to let them burn. How could I ever put a price on that feeling?

-Balsman Photography, Longmont, CO

That’s a strange headline for a photography blog post, isn’t it?

Let me tell you a story where I heard this statement. Years ago, my husband was talking with his dad about Dad’s archery leagues. My husband was thinking about taking up archery, & Dad had been ranking high in his leagues for quite a while. So, my husband mentioned that he was interested & told him what kind of bows, arrows, and all the other little doo-dads he thought he needed. It was quite a bill. Dad listened to the full list & my husband asked what he thought.

That’s when Dad said, “You can do all that, but remember that It Ain’t Just the Tool“.

Silence. My husband: “What do you mean? I read all the stuff in the catalogs & hunting magazines, & it said I needed to look for certain things, so that’s what I picked out.” Dad says, “Let me tell you what happens at my leagues.” There are guys who show up with $1,000 dollar bows, high-end accessories, all the stuff that makes you drool.

“I open my beat-up case, get out the bow I bought at the local discount store, and they ALL start to laugh at me”, Dad tells my husband.

“They give me a hard time about coming in with my bargain equipment. They tell me I shouldn’t be bringing that junk to competitions. I just sit & listen, minding my own. Then the league starts up.”

“A lot of these guys take their shots & don’t even hit the target. But they shrug it off. After all, archery is not an easy sport, so they let themselves off the hook. But I’m still on the hook, & they continue ribbing me about my equipment. I just put up with it. Finally, it’s my turn.”

“I step up & still get a couple more jabs while I’m getting ready. Son, last night I put 3 arrows in a 1 inch group at 50 feet.” Now think about that. Go look at a fire extinguisher on the wall. The little indicator dial on top is about an inch across. Walk just 12-15 paces away & you’re already at 30 feet. Look how small that is now. Almost DOUBLE that distance is how far away Dad was & still put 3 arrows in that little space.

Dad continued, “All of a sudden, there’s no more kidding around. The guys who were running me down all night now are embarrassed & some of them get kinda hacked. Now I start hearing something else - envy & disbelief. How are you walking in here with that junk & shooting like that?

“Here’s what I tell them if they really want to know,” Dad says. “It Ain’t Just the Tool. You can’t buy your way into doing what I just did. You’ve got to have some innate talent for it & more importantly, you have to work at it - you have to practice. You’ve got to put in the time to do the things that everybody says you should do but few people actually bother with. I tried their bows, & they’re sure nice. I don’t have to do some of the extra things I do now to work with my equipment. But I can’t afford that stuff. What I could afford, I bought. Then, all it took was what little talent I had, my own willingness to learn what I had to do, & a lot of practice. Now, I can pull off things like what I did last night.”

“Even though I tell these guys these things, though, NOT ONE of them will believe me. They’ll continue showing up once a week, take their shots, & put their stuff away until the next week. When they save up again, they’ll buy another, more expensive bow so (they think) their archery will get better.”

What’s this got to do with photography?

It’s the same thing. Look around, & you’ll see any number of people with a good camera. Cameras become more capable & less expensive every year. It would seem that all you need to do is go buy a good-quality camera, & you’re all set. WRONG. That’s not all it takes.

Here’s what really goes into becoming a professional portrait photographer…

• Composition of the image - this is the difference between an image that is easily passed by & an image that engages anyone who views it
• attention to lighting - very important, as composition will mean little if we do not have the understanding of how to paint with light
• ability to pose the subject attractively & comfortably with composition & lighting kept in harmony
• technical abilities with the camera itself - it does no one any good for a photographer to stand there trying to figure out how the machine works on everyone’s time
• computer skills (for digital photography) - an absolute must now, as photography & computers are intimately combined now; a photographer’s work is only beginning when the images are captured
• people skills - the vast majority of our work is NOT with the details of our equipment; we enjoy giving our clients a pleasant experience while we help them preserve memories
• artistic vision - not everything going into the final image is readily apparent when the image is first captured; it takes an artistic eye to see what is not present right now & bring that vision to life
• choosing correct backgrounds, props, sets, locations, subject clothing - anything that will appear in the image is your photographer’s responsibility; an eye for these details will make or break a portrait
• willingness to constantly learn & develop from yourself & others - no one knows all, no one has done everything perfectly; we must be ready, willing, and able to hone any and all shortcomings
• persistence to do the things that must to be done in order to improve - it cannot be stressed enough that “talking the talk” will NOT get you where you need to go; you MUST “walk the walk”
• a deep seated LOVE of this art - this love will prop up the last two items in ways that a simple desire to run a business or make money simply cannot
• and more…

You can’t just pick these things up at the local department store. You can’t take your gobs of money to buy equipment, maybe open a studio, and expect that all of a sudden your photography will be stellar with hordes of clients beating down your door. Now, I can’t deny that the tools do matter, but only to a very limited point. What is more important is the time & effort you put in to learn, to practice, to finely hone your skills & your art. These things cannot be bought any other way than with your very own blood, sweat, & tears.

Consider this next time you are about to hire a portrait photographer. When you display portraits of your child, your family, or yourself for many years, you want them to be the absolute best they can be - memories you will treasure. In the end, YOU & your portraits benefit from knowing your photographer has done what it takes to become a true professional.

Balsman Photography unveils its newest and most adorable children’s set designs for those magical portraits moms and dads will cherish for decades to come.

This March, bring your little engineer to Balsman Photography for the “Great Train Capers” promotion. Also, bring your hatchling to play in our nest as part of our “All Cracked Up” promotion.

These promotions are limited to 20 bookings ONLY and are offered at a special session rate of $65 (the regular rate is $125).

Be sure to visit the website for more details: www.balsmanphotography.com.