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Printed Photo Books Give You an Opportunity to Learn More about Your Clients

When you are working as a professional photographer, you’ll find that you get to share in many intimate moments with your clients: wedding photographers are right there when their clients exchange their vows, children’s photographers are there with parents who are documenting milestones in the lives of their kids - early steps, favorite outfits. By offering printed photo books as an option to your clients, you’ll be able to do more than simply be there for important moments in their lives, you’ll also be able to get to know them a bit more.

When you offer printed photo books as an option for your clients, you’ll find that you are able to tell a part of their story. By sitting down with them and allowing them some input about which photos are going to be used in the printed photo book, what colors they are passionate about, what type of text - if any - they want to be sure to include in the photo book, you’ll be able to learn more about them.

What you’ll find, when you start learning more about your clients while creating printed photo books is that you’re likely to become a better photographer. Rather than simply looking at each photo shoot as a job, you’ll start to find yourself looking at things a bit differently and taking your role even more seriously.

Printed Photo Books: Getting the Word Out About What’s Important

When you’re working as a professional photographer, one of the things that you’ll want to do - in order to promote your business - is to identify those things that are important to you. Ultimately, by getting the word out about what matters to you as a photographer, you’ll find that you are able to attract those clients who are like you - who share the same interests and passions. When you use printed photo books to market your business, you’ll find that you are able to draw on those passions, to show your commitment, you’ll be able to connect with your prospects.

It’s the ability to connect with your prospective clients - to show them what’s important in your life, to show your commitment to family and to beauty - is essential. When a prospective client is looking for a photographer, you’ll find that sharing your passions with a printed photo book allows you to find common ground; that bond is going to help you to attract them as clients - and, when that bond is already there, you can be sure that there will be great shots that come out of a photo session.

Knowing what’s important to you is important; communicating it to your current and prospective clients is essential. With printed photo books, you’ll be able to see the benefits for yourself.

Why People Love Printed Photo Books

When you’re looking into ways of having a more positive impact on your clients - a tool that will help you to get them to invest in additional prints - one option that you’ll want to look into is printed photo books.

There’s something about printed photo books that is markedly appealing to people. Much like you may enjoy looking at coffee table photo books (if only to identify the techniques that other photographers have used), your clients are going to enjoy leafing through printed photo books.

When you offer them printed photo books that are created around their images, their families, their events and the things that matter to them the most, you’re able to give your clients something far more precious than a photographic print: you’re contributing and helping them to tell their stories. More importantly, you’re creating a keepsake - a version of their story that you can be sure that they pass down for generations to come.

When you offer printed photo books to your clients, you’ll find that more than just their story can be passed down, but also that your work will be a big part of it.

Most people love printed photo books because they enjoy seeing their stories unfold, most photographers love printed photo books because they ensure that their work lasts.

Professional Photo Books Let Your Work Stand Out

When you are working as a professional photographer, it’s important that you offer your clients something that they cannot get on their own. In addition to a higher quality camera, better lighting and balanced photos, you need to offer professional photo books to your clients.

Here’s why:

(source)Everyone used to print pictures from films/negatives to stick them into an album, sharing it with friends or for simply preserving memories. With the marriage of digital photography and digital publishing technology, everything changed and the ability to publish photographs in a coffee table style book (”subsidy or vanity publishing” in legal terms) is now in reach of everyone with a digital camera, a computer and Internet access.

When you are a professional photographer, you’ll find that you do things differently than the ways in which a hobbyist would; shouldn’t that apply to the photo books that you create as well?

When you offer professional photo books to your clients, you’ll find that it makes a difference. You’ll be able to offer photo books with better bindings, higher quality photos and layouts that are far superior to those that your clients can create for themselves. It’s professional photo books that will ensure that you stand out from your clients.

Printed Photo Books and Combining Your Passions

No one is passionate about a single thing; all of us have a wide variety of interests that sometimes come together. For photographers, printed photo books are a great way to combine your passions and to share them with others.

For example, with printed photo books, you’ll be able to take the time to look through the photographs that you have been the most proud of - be them portraits, travel shots or moments that you have captured while out in the wild. In other words, you’ll find that with printed photo books, you’ll find that your work as a photographer is a vessel - a chance to look at your other interests in a new way.

By combining your passions, you’ll discover that you are able to explore them in greater depth. When you’re looking at using a printed photo book to explore your passions and interests, using both photographs and the stories, thoughts, ideas and curiosities that you have as a foundation for your printed photo book, you’ll be able to express yourself in ways that photographs don’t allow.

When you are looking at printed photo books, you won’t just have an idea and you won’t simply have the photographs that you’ve taken. Instead, you’ll have a medium for expressing yourself.

Using Printed Photo Books to Share Your Ideas

Sometimes, photography is all about capturing a moment; sometimes, it’s all about capturing a mood or sharing something that’s hard to define in words. In the latter case, often what you are trying to convey in the images that you take is an idea; what better way to share that idea than to use a printed photo book?

When you start out with an idea, some time, your camera and whatever accessories you need, it’s possible to begin telling your story with a printed photo book. You’ll also be able to include words, poems or stories that help to further share what you’d been thinking.

Of course, there are a wide variety of ideas that can be shared with printed photo books. Maybe your project will be about your sense of what a family is, maybe your printed photo book will be centered around a concept, a phrase or the way that a color makes you feel.

Ultimately, however, when you’re looking at using printed photo books, you’re the one behind the wheel; whatever it is that you are passionate about, whatever your ideas are, you’ll be the one who is there to tell the story, to capture moments in time and to put everything together.

Printed Photo Books: Celebrating Your Best Work

It used to be that photography fell into one of three categories. Either photos were taken to document a place or an event, or photos were taken as a professional endeavor or photography was art for art’s sake. Thanks to printed photo books, many photographers are finding them in a position in which they can celebrate their best work, regardless of why the shots were taken:

(source)And, the best thing yet—while it was thus far considered a promotional event (read charity) to show photographs in a gallery, today it makes as much business sense as artistic to woo the new age artist—the hitherto unsung photographer!

The writing on the wall is clear—photography, as an art form has come of age, no longer content to just be a tool of documentation, no matter how valued.

The above excerpt was discussing photography in India and the ways in which it has changed (and continues to change); while it may not - at least initially - seem applicable to your own situation, there are likely to be some parallels.

Of those parallels, one of the most notable is that, with printed photo books, you’re no longer in a position where your work has to simply document an event. With printed photo books, you’re no longer forced to market your documentary work to publishing houses; self-publishing is a simple process. And, perhaps most importantly, the art of your photography is something that does not need to be limited in any way.

Photo Book Marketing: Making Sure That You Come Off as a Professional

When it comes to photo book marketing, making sure that you’re choosing the right photo books is essential. After all, when it comes to photo book marketing, you aren’t just showing people your images, you’re either encouraging them to show your work, encouraging them to hire you for a job or you’re showing off your talents for another reason.

Regardless of your motivation for photo book marketing, it’s important to remember that your goal is, at least in part, to have a positive impact on the person who is looking though the book at your work. If you choose a low quality photo book, it’s entirely possible that they will not be seeing what you want them to:

  • If pages come loose from the binding, you’re not going to look as though quality tops your list of commitments.
  • If the inks that are used to print the photo book don’t accurately show the color, there are going to be questions about what you are capable of.

On the other hand, when you choose a professional quality book - a photo book geared towards professional photographers that uses library quality bindings and high end inks - you can be sure that those who you are marketing your work to will see only the best of what you have to offer.

Printed Photo Books Help You to Embrace Change

When you are familiar with using printed photo books, you’ll find that a number of things change in terms of your perception. On one hand, what you will find is that you are more comfortable and that, well, exploring the changes that you’ve made as a door that is opening:

(source)“Change is part of life, and you should learn to be comfortable with change. Change brings renewed opportunity. Reach down deep and find things that drive you, and then turn those things into opportunity,” Dr. Ellen Kean Rudolph said.

Although she was trained as a counseling psychologist and family therapist, her advice doesn’t derive from textbooks. When she talks about welcoming or even seeking change, she uses her own life experiences as a guiding path.

As a photographer, one of the things that you’ll quickly discover is that people change all of the time (this is a big part of why parents with young kids are great portrait clients). What you may not see are the changes that take place within yourself.

When you’re working with printed photo books, however, you’ll find that there are changes that you see - changes that you’re able to track over time. By noticing them, working with them, and embracing them (and then printing them out in photo books to share with others), you’ll find that you do more than just grow as a person; you’ll also find that you grow as a photographer.

Printed Photo Books Let You Capture Life Through Your Eyes

Being a photographer is, in part, all about showing others life as you see it; printed photo books make it easier for you to share what you’ve seen and to describe what caught your eye or why you believe that it matters.

Now, that’s not to say that all printed photo books need to be documentary projects. It’s also not to say that you should set out and let a story dictate what you choose to (and not to) do.

Even if you’re not already aware of it, the photos that you have taken tell a story about your life or your experiences. Sorting through old photos (like the ones that we all have sitting stored on our hard drives) can be a great way of exploring the process of designing a printed photo book as well; think of it as hands on training of a sort.

When you have great photos and you’re looking to share them - whether to detail an experience or a series of experiences - or you’re looking to a new way to tell the stories that your clients want to share, printed photo books are a valuable tool.

Printed photo books are all about creating something bigger than simply a photograph; see for yourself just how much of a story you have to tell.