53. The Importance of Printed Products: Preserving Family History Through Portraits

Hey there! In today's episode, I'm diving into the soulful artistry of photography, urging us to reconnect with the roots of our craft. I reminisce about the days of film cameras when photographers meticulously planned and crafted a few exquisite portraits meant for walls, not just social media.

Let's take a journey back to when portraits began, where artists invested time, studied subjects, and created timeless pieces. We're the modern successors of this legacy. Imagine if only one photo could define you for eternity. It's a powerful concept, one that demands we truly know our clients.

I highlight the fading tradition of displaying family portraits and challenge us to revive it. Research shows the impact on children's self-confidence when they see their faces on the wall. Our business is not just about money; it's about preserving a tradition.

As photographers, we shape the narrative. So, join me in reflecting on our role, our art, and the lasting impact we can create.

Let's carry the torch for generations to come!

Grab your seat for the very FIRST Equine Photography Virtual Summit, here! November 28 & 29, 2023

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Thanks for listening!

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:02

Welcome to Mindset and Money Mastery for Photographers the podcast. We help overwhelmed photographers make more money while simplifying their business by mastering their you guessed it mindset and money. Tune in each week for practical and actionable tips to take your photography business up a notch. Let's dive right in.

Speaker 2: 0:22

Hey guys, this week we have some exciting things coming. In case you haven't heard, this week we are hosting our first official virtual summit for equine photographers. I am so excited about that. Even if you're not an equine photographer, you should hop on over and grab a seat, because there are going to be lots of great topics covered and there are going to be some things that are very specific for horse photographers, but there are also going to be some things that are great for photographers in general as well. So make sure you head on over and grab your seat for that. It does kick off tomorrow, so I am incredibly excited and cannot wait to see you over there for that.

Speaker 2: 0:57

The other thing is, before we dive in today, I also wanted to remind you your magic year is happening now. Those of you that have been on our Plain New Year workshop in the past, you're going to want to hop on over into an instance inside your magic year. I'm taking a lot of the greatness and the things that happen that are amazing out of our Plain New Year workshop and we are putting it inside of your magic year and you're going to get to be with me all year long as you work on finding magic and building your business and hopefully making more money, because that's what it's about, right? So today we're going to dive into the importance of printed products and really the physical art aspect. A lot of times in the beginning, we're just photographers. We have a camera, we take the pictures, we deliver the pictures and we forget that we're actually truly artists. Remember film cameras? Well, do you think that photographers sat around in those days and took a thousand images, hoping that they got something that their clients would post on Facebook? No, photographers back in the day were planning to create those very few amazing portraits that their clients were going to print and put on their wall in half or forever. They were planning every single little detail for that one photo and, honestly, that was the purpose of what photographers did. And somewhere along the line with social media and the online space, photographers got this assumption that people just wanted pictures for social media and they didn't want that one portrait for the wall. So I really think it's important to go back and look at the history of photography and photographers and where we came from. It is incredibly important If we think about before, portraits were taken by photographers.

Speaker 2: 2:44

Portraits were created by artists, and one artist would spend countless hours on one single piece. They would study their subjects in person a lot of times, because they didn't have photos of these people necessarily. They'd create a plan, a strategy, a vision. They would know where that art was going and it would be created to completion, from idea to strategy, to the vision, to the painting, all the way to framing, by artists, and we are truly the modern day version of that. These pieces of art that these artists created thousands of years ago I don't even know how long ago. They are still adorning walls of homes.

Speaker 2: 3:29

When you go to Europe and you go to these gorgeous, stunning castles, what do you see in these great rooms? You see these larger-than-life portraits of the head of the family, the wife, of their children. Those portraits are still there long after the person is gone, long after that person is even really thought of. But because of that portrait, that person is still thought of each and every day. There is power in that.

Speaker 2: 4:02

I want you to just think about this right now, like this is the sad world we live in. Do you know what your great-grandparents or your great-great-grandparents looked like? In many cases, most of us don't. I know what my great-grandmother looks like. Do you know why? Because there was a picture of her at my grandparents' home. I know that only because of that. Because of that, that person lives and has a place in my brain as a person, as a part of my family, as a part of our life and our story and our journey.

Speaker 2: 4:32

This is something that, guys, this is scary. Let's just be 100% honest. How many of you can go back and find pictures of your family from seven, eight years ago? Are they lost on a cell phone somewhere that died on the cloud, that you don't even know where to get them? Can you find the files on your computer? I'm guilty of this, guys. As a photographer, I am guilty of not knowing how to manage my own personal portraits and photos. Heck, I don't even know where my wedding photos are. To be honest with you. My husband I think he knows where they're at, but I don't. That's a scary reality. We don't want our clients to have that. We don't want our clients to look back and regret that or have those feelings that I'm sharing with you today.

Speaker 2: 5:13

What if we started to look at ourselves and our role in the world that we get to play as photographers, just like the artists who used to paint those giant portraits. What if we recognize that this is important? What if this oo is out of every being of our soul? What if we shared the story and shouted it from the rooftops to remind people how important this thing is, that it's being lost? And you might think, well, it's not being lost. There's a million photographers, yeah, but there's not a million photographers creating art. If we start to think about it like this and we realize that the portrait used to be created for that one portrait, the one portrait that would represent and live on to tell the story of that person for eternity, and we start to really consider the importance of that and the weight of that, how would our business change? Think about if there was only one photo of you created that lived on for the rest of eternity. That one photo needed to represent exactly who you were as a person and tell your story, that that one photo is the only thing that your great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great kids would ever know of you. How does that feel? I'm betting that in order to do that and in order for those artists back in the day to be able to do that and create that one portrait that would live on forever. It required the artist to get to know the person so they could take on the weight of what they were trying to share and show with this piece of art. How can you create something special and unique that could potentially be that one portrait for your client that shows and lasts for generations? And, honestly, I'm going to tell you that if you are not taking the time to get to know your clients, then how on earth are you going to show up and how on earth are you going to truly get to know that person that you're photographing and create that portrait that is worthy of that?

Speaker 2: 7:06

Growing up, I was always mesmerized by the portraits at my grandparents' house. You might have heard me even talk about this before, because it is something that is so, so, hugely burned into my head and that I think about all the time. I think about going to my grandparents' home and seeing those photos on the wall, every portrait from my mom's childhood. If it wasn't for my grandparents having those portraits on their wall, I would have no concept of what my mom was like as a teenager twirling in the marching band. I would have no concept of what it was like when my mom got glamour shots done right, because I didn't see those things growing up in my house with my mom. But when I visited my grandparents' home I did. There were even these pictures of my grandfathers. I believe they were siblings, they were babies and they were these two babies in these gorgeous oval frames that lived in their guest room over the bed and the babies were in these white smocks and they're just something out of this world. I can't even begin to describe to you how incredibly beautiful these portraits were of these babies.

Speaker 2: 8:13

There were photos of my grandfather from his military days, my grandmother with her hair and makeup done to the nines, my mother posed perfectly in that marching man portrait twirling her baton, and even those, you know, 90s style glamour shots of my sisters in the hallway. Every time I visited my grandparents' house, I would walk down the halls, walk into the rooms and just stare, knowing that that was important to them. They were a very average American family. My grandfather walked for the railroad. My grandmother worked at a bank. They were not wealthy people, but they spent the time and the money to invest in those important portraits, the one that would live on their wall for their life. They were just normal people, but those photos meant the world to them.

Speaker 2: 9:03

It's amazing how much in today's world we're missing out on that. How many people's homes do you go into that have those portraits of their family, of their grandparents, of their great grandparents, of their children, of every member of their family, their dogs, their horses? How many households do you go into when you see that? Today, you don't. It's truly something that is dying and the reason it's dying is because photographers are not doing their jobs. To be 100% honest with you, it's photographers that are causing this to happen. It is up to us to continue this tradition. It is up to us to carry this on. It is up to us to say it is important for your children to see your face on the wall and their faces on the wall. There's actually research and studies that have been done about children who are raised in homes who see their faces on their wall, what it does for them and their self-confidence. By seeing their face on their wall, they believe that their parents value them and adore them. It makes a difference in a household. I know all this is our job. You hear me talk a lot about mindset and money and selling art, but this is what matters.

Speaker 2: 10:15

I think sometimes we go away from things and how they've been done historically, and then all of a sudden there's this weird realization of like, oh man, we're missing out on this, oh man, we've lost touch with this and we are so far removed from what things used to be. And then there's this cycle where things come back. Think about 90s clothes, for example. They're coming back for some reason. I don't know why they're coming back. I don't think we're missing out on anything without 90s clothes in our lives, but there's a cycle and there's this ebb and flow of things coming and going and I 100% believe that that cycle of displaying portrait on our walls of our family, of having that generational thing, I think that we're in this low spot of that cycle and I think that down the road we're going to see a comeback. But the only way we're going to see this comeback is with the help of you, with the help of photographers standing behind this mission and believing that this is important.

Speaker 2: 11:12

Cell phone cameras have given us the ability to capture everything in life, but we're really using now that because of that, we're taking photographs for granted. Those pictures on your phone disappear and when you ask yourself 50 years from now if you can find those pictures when your kids were babies or you're going through this amazing thing in life, or that dog that was your heart and soul, will you actually be able to find those photos when you need them? Honestly, like I said earlier, I can't find pictures from 10 years ago that I took of my cell phone, but the pictures that we've paid for and we've bought from photographers that are on our wall, those pictures they're there. They're there forever. They will always be in my life. Start to think about the scary reality of the path we're on. Having access to cameras 24-7 on our phones is great, but we don't know how it's going to really stand up to the test of time. So I really just want to encourage you today to realize the importance of this, to realize the value in this.

Speaker 2: 12:17

I think about my home. Growing up, we had a picture of our family in the blue bonnets taken by the photographer that we went to over the fireplace. The same picture for most of my life, till I was in high school, until we moved, and I didn't have my two front teeth in that picture. My family did not have another family portrait. Until I was a senior in high school, we went to the dance studio and the photographer that did our dance pictures for so long, for so many years, that still did those dance pictures of the dance studio that my sister then worked at. She, I guess, had told my sister I don't exactly know how to happen but the next family picture we had was in the dance studio, taken by the dance studio photographer, because Ms Brenda said we need a picture of you girls and we got a picture.

Speaker 2: 13:03

But honestly it's hard and as people's kids get older and as life happens and as activities, you take those things for granted. I even think about the fact of, like, how many pictures do I actually have on my phone of me and my husband and my child? Not a whole lot. If you're a photographer, you're probably really guilty of this. You're not in a lot of your family pictures. There's a lot of pictures of your kid but not yourself, or your animals but not yourself.

Speaker 2: 13:31

It really is just a weird reality we live in and something that I have been doing in my own business is when I photograph a woman with her horse when a photograph is senior with her horse, I always encourage and invite them to bring their whole family. I asked them like, when was the last time we had a family portrait? Let's get a family portrait. I know it's hard. I know it's harder the older your kids get, but let's do it. It means so much to me and, as a horse photographer and as somebody that photographs equestrians with their horses primarily in horses in general you'll probably have never heard me say this. But, like, getting that family portrait is so important for me and I will do whatever I have to do to get the family there for a family picture. Do I actually really love photographing families? Is it like my heart and soul? No, not really. It's not the most fun thing in the world for me, but that family portrait at the end that goes on the wall, it's worth it. It's so worth it.

Speaker 2: 14:31

So I just want to challenge you with this. I want you to really think about this. Are you doing a disservice to your clients, to the photography industry, to the artists that came before us, or are you showing up and building and helping carry on this legacy? This is our job, this is our mission as photographers. It should be like yeah, there's a lot of other things that go into this. But this is what's really important. If each and every one of you listening to this are able to take this and you're able to step into that place and start to realize and start to educate and share and build up the power of this with our clients, we're gonna make a difference. One family at a time, one client at a time. Share this with your photographer. Friends. Don't let this die. Don't let the power of the portrait on the wall that lives on for generations die. It is powerful and it is valuable. I hope that you all found this helpful and I hope they all have taken something from this.

Speaker 2: 15:34

This episode is a little bit different than normal and it was really just something that I felt like I needed to share the power of. In this same aspect, I'm gonna encourage you and say that your clients expecting them to print it and put it on their walls and enough guys. It is up to you to print it. It is up to you to figure out what finish is gonna look the best. It is up to you to put the frame around that photo. If you don't do those things, you're only completing half of your duty here on this earth. If you're printing the picture, yeah, you're going further, but when you go as far as to frame it, choose the finish, choose the sizing, help your clients with all those things. That is the hundred percent completion of this process into fruition in your clients' homes, on their walls, and I just want to encourage you with that this week.

Speaker 2: 16:23

So, for all of you dog photographers or horse photographers who are listening to this, I would really encourage you to start to include your clients' families in their portraits, whether it's their spouse, whether it's their children even if you're not a children person, I get it, but I'm gonna encourage you to do this. It is something that you have incredible power and incredible ability to provide something for them. They might not realize they need it, they might push back, they might say, oh no, that's gonna be too much work to get the whole family there, but just know that in the end, there's power. It's no different than when I used to photograph weddings, and at weddings I was so diligent to try to make sure I got a really good picture of Grandma and Grandpa and older members of the family, because when was the last time they had a picture together? When was the last time they had a professional picture at all A long time ago. And when I go up to Grandma and Grandpa and say, grandma and Grandpa, can I take a picture of y'all together? And I would sneak them off to the side and pose them and make them look beautiful, feel beautiful, and then I would say something like who was the last time you had a picture together? Just the two of you.

Speaker 2: 17:37

Some of these people that were in their 70s and 80s would say our wedding day. We've literally never had a professional portrait done and like I'm just at the wedding as their wedding photographer. But the power and that and the importance of that is just incredible. Like that's important. That's equally as important. Have you ever invited Grandma and Grandpa to come out to the photo shoot and have a picture taken with their grandchild? How important would that be to your client?

Speaker 2: 18:08

So don't forget about these things, guys. Keep this in mind. Remember that this stuff matters. Remember that this is more than just about making money. This is about carrying on a tradition that's been around for ages and centuries and dates back to somebody standing there with a paintbrush and painting a portrait of somebody, and dates back to frames that were can carved by an artisan who sat there and carved out this frame for this specific portrait of this specific person. That all told a story. I'm going to challenge you to go forth with this this week and really just think about it, put it into practice, ask yourself if you are carrying on this tradition and the legacy of creating art that lasts for generations.

Speaker 1: 18:55

Thank you so much for listening. If you enjoyed this episode and you'd like to support the podcast, please make sure you share it on social media or leave a rating and review. As always, you can check out the links and resources in the show notes over at masteryourmindmoneycom. To catch all the latest from me, you can follow me on Instagram at masteryourmindmoney, and don't forget to join our free Facebook group photography business. Tune up with Corinne Decay. Thanks again and I'll see you next time.