Experience Sharing 2 : The power of FOCUS

[saifulnang]

Happy Hari Raya to all of you. It was sometime silence as I can just read but rarely have much time to get things in detail in criticizing people's picture. Anyway, it's not a popular job to critic people's work however, I do hope critics can be very healthy after this. Here I can see some already started to share their know how in helping the newbies or the oldtimer who now seeking for a wind of change in wedding photography.

Since 2004, I started the whole thing as a wedding photographer. Simply because I really want to be one. Not because of money (those day, it was a bad idea to earn in Malay wedding photography). Later than that I became wedding photographer until today. People asked me, did I shoot other than wedding? I said, yes I could but I don't want to feature those more than wedding as I don't want people to see me as a multi-talented photographer who can shoot anything under the sun. I was a little bit lucky as I was very determine of what I want to pursue on. Some people might have to try many before they know which one do they like most. Simply like becoming a specialist doctor, one of the requirement for a doctor to be a specialist is to be a GP (General Practice) first. We can still go to E&T doctor for our fever, they will give you a bill of RM300 with probably the same medication like if you meet GP Doc who charge you only RM30 only.

What I wanted to say is the PREMIUM for you to be known as a photographer is through specialization / focus. Steve McCurry may probably shoot wedding but he opt not to, James Nachtwey can probably shoot better travel picture but he opt not to as he don't want to be seen as someone who can do everything. Let us see another analogy, a knife who meant to be used for butchering may not good enough to shave, and we can't used razor blade to slaughter a chicken.

Sometime people asked me, did i get bored of doing the same thing over and over again? My answer is, I shoot different couple every week and they are different. Yes, the genre is the same "Wedding"...that's why sometime you must know what is your rice then you eat it together with some side dishes but still with rice. My rice is "wedding". Well, sometime...I do eat KFC or Pizza Hut as well. But I just can't do it everyday

Bottomline, if you are a newbie and you don't really know what you like to specialize, maybe you should try many first. Later you specialize...and as a specialist doctor got paid in premium figure...so do specialist in photography

Trust me

Cheers

[budak]

everybody wants to be Saiful Nang

[saifulnang]

Nobody can be like others.
The best they can be is themselves...simple works...we just have to improve ourselves instead of
becoming others

[budak]

SN, Saiful Nang as in "wedding photographer". maybe because they see that you became a millionaire doing wedding photography and thinks there's lot of money in wedding photography which is true to certain extent. but ironically i've seen some of "us" photographers charged RM900 for a 3 day job, with a lot of freebies, custom album, prints, frames. sadly, this devalues the photography industry itself and also "poisoned" the mindset of prospective clients.

[saifulnang]

SN, Saiful Nang as in "wedding photographer". maybe because they see that you became a millionaire doing wedding photography and thinks there's lot of money in wedding photography which is true to certain extent. but ironically i've seen some of "us" photographers charged RM900 for a 3 day job, with a lot of freebies, custom album, prints, frames. sadly, this devalues the photography industry itself and also "poisoned" the mindset of prospective clients.

There are still people sell handbag at RM30 and still people who buy it want to bargain.
There are still people sell handbag at RM30,000 and people buy it and just pay the pricetag without asking any discount.

We choose, you choose...all are option.

[jsawkang]

Great Sharing... Very true

[budak]

There are still people sell handbag at RM30 and still people who buy it want to bargain.
There are still people sell handbag at RM30,000 and people buy it and just pay the pricetag without asking any discount.

We choose, you choose...all are option.

True. there are different market segments.

Like once in your case, where the client opted to buy a DSLR at first instead of investing in a good photographer and later regretted his decision and came back to you to re-shoot their wedding. He learnt the hard way though.

You cannot get a RM30,000 handbag for RM30. It was priced that way because of certain reasons and you can get RM30 handbag anywhere.

Points to ponder:
Why are we selling our handbag for RM30 and not even selling for RM3,000 while others are selling at RM30,000?

probable answers:
a. i got the bag for free so RM30 is my profit (yeah right?)
b. i can live with a profit of RM10 for all my hard work
c. my handbag is good as the RM30,000 handbag but i am selling at RM30 so i can sell more i.e 1000 handbag more to get to RM30,000
d. i don't think my handbag is worth RM30,000 or even RM3,000
e. i have my monthly salary so RM30 will be my bonus

once we start charging clients it will be considered as business. so it is a business decision.

[saifulnang]

True. there are different market segments.

Like once in your case, where the client opted to buy a DSLR at first instead of investing in a good photographer and later regretted his decision and came back to you to re-shoot their wedding. He learnt the hard way though.

You cannot get a RM30,000 handbag for RM30. It was priced that way because of certain reasons and you can get RM30 handbag anywhere.

Points to ponder:
Why are we selling our handbag for RM30 and not even selling for RM3,000 while others are selling at RM30,000?

probable answers:
a. i got the bag for free so RM30 is my profit (yeah right?)
b. i can live with a profit of RM10 for all my hard work
c. my handbag is good as the RM30,000 handbag but i am selling at RM30 so i can sell more i.e 1000 handbag more to get to RM30,000
d. i don't think my handbag is worth RM30,000 or even RM3,000
e. i have my monthly salary so RM30 will be my bonus

once we start charging clients it will be considered as business. so it is a business decision.

Exactly it is

Great Sharing... Very true

Thanks for reading

[nazri_amy]

thanks for sharing bro......

[hafiz chelsea]

true...in the other word...price come with quality...