Today’s post is going to be a quick post touching on marketing and some future posts I am going to be working on. A few years back I really was looking for something new to add to our photography and really wanted a higher impact with our slideshows. At that time I was just creating slideshows myself with iMovie or sometimes Final Cut Express. I would change around the pacing of the photos a bit to liven the show up but they still didn’t have the impact that I wanted. After thinking for awhile I thought it would be so cool to have some little snippets of video throughout the slideshow, I had a pretty basic point and shoot that took decent video so was going to try that out. I tested it out a bit but the quality never matched what was in my head and along with that I found a company that created pretty amazing slideshows (eMotion media) so put the video thing on the back burner for awhile. When the Canon 5d Mark II came out with HD video I thought, Perfect, this is just what I am looking for. I can create HD video, plus use my current lens set to create some pretty artistic video. Well with the busy schedule of shooting 40+ weddings my idea never became reality. It was a project I wanted to do but was on my “someday” list.

This year I am finally making this happen and over the next few months working on getting some samples for my clients to see and marketing this to them. But looking back over the past year and a half this really taught me a good lesson that I think is key to marketing. Listen to your heart and ACT on it…. right away. Plain and simple, but a huge key to success. Honestly there are many reasons other than being “busy” for me never trying this out. Fear of rejection, fear of not knowing how to do it, so many little things that all got in the way of me trying something new. So how does this all tie into marketing? People want and crave uniqueness, especially in a saturated field clients want someone and will remember a photographer who stands apart from the rest. I always look for things I can do that nobody else is doing, whether it’s the albums I offer, printing, anything I can do different I try out. Looking back at last year I think if I had went with what my heart was telling me and offering a cool new Fusion video with my weddings I think that could have helped me book more weddings. Now one year later there are more people offering this and when we roll it into our offerings we won’t the the first in our area, I still think it will be something of huge value to add to our clients but won’t have the impact it would have if I would have followed my heart and went for it. Aside from the marketing benefits of trying something new and being the leader in a new area when you try something out you grow. Even if it fails and clients don’t want it you still learn and grow. Your passion along the way for your art also grows as well.

So I am getting into the new Fusion and am going to share my experience along the way. Having no formal video training I am learning the ropes as I go along and going to post about my experience. So far I have done two fusion shoots and have learned a lot already. I’ll post a review of my first shoot next week!

If you are doing Fusion shoots I would love to hear your experience so far, leave any comments below.