Photos-Now Dog Show Photography

More busy times.

2008-07-14T22:45:00.001-07:00

We have the PG Show on July 25, 26, 27 then I will have to process like crazy to get as many orders done as I can before we head to the island on Thursday night. We have the two shows there, Campbell river and Courtney. Six days of shooting back to back. Should be fun.
If we do good at these two we might have a shot at doing Victoria next year.

The studio is coming along. We will be gyprocking it this week.

Cheers for now.
Chris

Busy times coming up.

2008-06-15T21:05:00.001-07:00

We are off to Wembly (Grande Prairie) at the end of this month. June 27,28, & 29th. We will be travelling back to PG on the 30th and have to pack back up and go to Fort St James on July 1St to fire off the Canada Day fireworks Show. They like Cheryl and I up there so we have to be there evry July 1st.

PG show is at the end of July - 25,26, 27th. Wine and cheese is at our trailer, probably on the friday night. It should be a good time to meet and visit.

Then on July 31, Thursday night we leave for the South. We have to be on the 2:00 ferry on the 1st to be at the Campbell river show on the 2nd, 3rd, 4th and then to Courtenay on the 5th, 6th 7th. So that is two of the three island circuit shows. We hope to have a shot at the Victoria show in 2009.

GOOD NEWS ! We are building a studio in PG.

I`ve started a blog on it - http://buildmystudio.blogspot.com/

This is what it looks like right now. The backyard looks like a war zone. After we get it all done then we can landscape the yard in front of it. We should be up and running by end of August. We have to get the shows done first then we can get to finishing the studio. The Carpentry class at the college is doing the work so they will have the building done by July. Then we can get in and start setting up the studio part.
Check it out. We are going to go after Pets (of course) and baby photos to start with. There has to be something in the Both catagory. I think everyone wants photos of their baby and pets together. Hopefully it will work out.

Photos-Now Customer Satisfaction Statement

2007-12-08T10:43:00.000-08:00

We have had two comments lately from Show Secretaries about two customers with print problems.
I'm posting here to restate Photos-Now Customer Satisfaction policy.

You must be happy with our prints. It’s as simple as that.

If a print is lost in the mail or damaged in transit we will replace it no charge and no questions asked.
We use regular mail for shipping in order to keep costs down. So far in three years we have lost less than 10 photos and have only had 3 or 4 damaged.
We print the photos for best exposure of the dog and it’s coat. We want to show the detail in the white dogs and black dogs coats so print accordingly.
If a customer is not happy with that we will call them to determine the problem and correct it.

Those customers did not come to us. They chose to talk to the show secretaries.

I corrected the problem with one of them and the other will be corrected this weekend.
If one of our customers comes to you and says they are not happy with their print please direct them to us. I cannot fix the problem if the customer doesn’t contact us or if I don’t hear about it. So please contact me either by email – chris@telus.net
or by phone – 250-563-4466. We will do everything we can do to correct the problem.

You all know that we are building the dog show photography business on customer service and quality.
I am the first person to admit that we are not perfect. We make mistakes so to keep our customers happy we offer a satisfaction guarantee.
We have only had to refund money to one customer because she was not happy with the photos. That’s the last resort but if I cannot make the print be what the customer wants then I will refund the money.

If anyone has any questions please contact me.

So on to better things –

We picked up the Burns Lake show for 2008 and are really close on one or two more.

We added a third viewing station this year and as soon as I can find another computer with XP on it I will add the fourth viewing station.
As soon as I can get them we are purchasing two new state of the art cameras. There is a huge waiting list and I am in about the middle of it. We will have the new cameras for CKOC in March.
The Nikon D300 has the best low light sensitivity I have seen in a digital camera. It has a new focusing engine – 52 points to focus from instead of 2 with our current cameras.
Our win photos and candids should be even better with the new cameras.

Off to Grande Prairie

2007-11-03T10:14:00.000-07:00

We are off to Grande Prairie next weekend. It's snowing right now so it might be a slow trip. But the whole Grande Prairie experience is worth it. The organizers and club people are top notch. We are SOOO Happy to be their photographers.
Our show special for Grande Prairie and Calgary is Candids and Headshots are $ 20.00 or 3 for $50.00.

I bought a new flash gun. I'm going to set it up as a hairlight to see if we can get better quality photos. I am always looking for new ideas to make us better. We want to make the best quality photos in the whole dog show world. We feel that our customers deserve the best.

If anyone has any ideas how we can improve let us know, either on the blog or at a show or email me or carrier pigeon or message in a bottle or however.

See you in GP!

It's been awhile

2007-10-01T10:57:00.000-07:00

What a summer. Had a bunch of stuff to do around the house.
The Prince George Show was very exciting. We camped right beside our tent.
Sales ended up the same as other shows but with less at the show and more after the show from the web and emails. Candid shots are picking up in sales with every show. We are promoting the candids and ringshots at the shows in Grande Prairie and Calgary.
Candids and ringshots will be $ 20.00 or 3 for $ 50.00.

I am saving to replace both of our cameras this year. They both have a lot of shots on them. I want to upgrade our quality levels as well so we will be jumping up a couple of steps on quality.

We are looking forward to the end of this season and the coming year. We are still looking for new shows. I've sent some emails out and will be sending more shortly.

If anyone knows of a club looking for a photographer please contact us with emails or phone #s. There's some free photos as finders fees for any contact that ends up as a gig for us.

So - Grande Prairie is next on Nov 10, & 11th.
Then Calgary first weekend in December.

It snowed in Taylor!

2007-05-23T14:22:00.000-07:00

We had some snow in Taylor and it was a bit cold but the weekend was great.

We took lots of candids and had lots of people looking.
The candids and some of the individual shots are up on the web.
I took some portraits on the hill outside the arena. Look in the Whippet and the Goldens files under the Fort St John folder. Let me know what you think of them. I'll post a couple later.

Tanya is processing the photos today and I will process a bunch tonight.

More on the show later.

Next show is Taylor BC

2007-04-27T09:43:00.000-07:00

We are getting ready for the Taylor Show, May 19,20,21. This is the first time shooting this show. We are all pretty excited. I am taking the trailer. I've been cleaning it up and packing it for the show. We are camping on the grounds. I want to get to know the exhibitors better. We like the social aspect of the shows and are getting to know some of the people better.

I am going to rebuild the posing stands they are pretty plain and neutral. I want them to look a bit better.

Not a lot of sales of candids yet but we are getting consistent hits on the website so people are looking. I hope to upgrade my cameras for better low light photos so we can present a better candid. They will also help with the win photos. I'm promoting this company as high quality. So far we consistently have put out a good product. The better cameras will give us a better file to work with and the prints will get better. It's been hard perfecting the various workflows that we use. We have the post show processing going pretty smooth right now. I can get more than 90% of the photos out in less than a week. I want to have the whole show done in less than a week so that's what we are shooting for. I've been teaching Tanya to do the post processing in Photoshop. She is picking it at a great rate. In the future I will have two computers set up to do processing so we eventually will be able to have everything out in a couple of days.

I'm going to try and post more here. I don't know who is looking but I want this whole website thing to become a resource we can offer our customers. I think we can go a long way by promoting our experience and quality and speed.

\

Calgary March Show

2007-03-12T11:34:00.000-07:00

Last weekend we were in Calgary again for the first of two shows this year. Cheryl had the flu so Tanya and I did the show with just the two of us. It was hectic at times but we did it. Customer service is so important to us that we want everyone to get what they want when they want.

I am looking for one of two more laptops so we can have up to four viewing stations.

Here it is Monday and we have all the photos from the show mailed. There was a couple that had to be redone and they will be mailed tomorrow. We are pretty proud of the fact that we can get all the photos out in a week and are trying to get faster at it.

We have prepared ourselves to be able to email photos to results websites right away so you can get photos of your wins on the web. If you want results photos sent, please let us know at the show and we will send it out that night if we have web access.

We had some interest in coffee cups and mousepads. We're offering them again in Fort St John to see what kind of interest there is. Next show is May long weekend in Taylor(Frt St John)
See you there. Mention the blog and I will email you a free websized copy of your photo.

New Website is up.

2007-02-08T11:39:00.000-08:00

Hoo, Hoo, The new website is up. Lookmatters out of Regina did the redesign. I wanted a simple design that was easy to navigate and that's what I got. The website is and will continue to be a major marketing tool for us. We have the site to be able to post pictures for customers to see and so we can send potential customers to see what we do. I try to make initial contact with a potential show via email. It's a soft sell and easily accepted by customers. I mention the website and invite them to see it. That way there really is no obligation to even answer my email. Although I appreciate the recepient to acknowledge the email even if it is just a quick no thank you.

As we grow the business there are things we are going to try. I'm going to shoot some agility this year to see what kind of reaction to our photos we can get. I want to try herding or lure coursing. Tough events to shoot and get photos that show what the sport is all about.

Lots of changes for spring.

2007-02-06T13:23:00.000-08:00

We are off to the first Calgary show of 2007. It happens on March 2,3,4. in the Big 4 building.

The new website is coming along. I hope to have it up and running in the next week or two.

I had some problems with my main laptop in December, but I've had windows reinstalled and have also installed and configured all the photo stuff. The viewing stations went over well at the December show. We will be adding one more viewing station this year so we will have 3.

This is a dog show photos blog so here's a headshot from the last show.

I had some coffee mugs and mousepads made with Doggy photos on them. We will be offering them at an introductory price of $ 19.95 each. We will offer this special for Calgary and Fort St John to see what kind of interest we get.

2007-01-17T21:54:00.000-08:00

Things have been busy so far this year. I am looking at different ways to ship our photos. The post office managed to mangle a couple of more. There hasn't really been a lot of damage but we really want to get good photos to the customers the first try.

Here's a couple of shots of our studio setup from Calgary.

Calgary December Show

2007-01-04T09:56:00.000-08:00

Calgary Show was a success!
This was the first use of the viewing stations. Had lots of comments on how the viewing stations made ordering and viewing so much easier.
I am looking for another laptop or two to increase the viewing stations to 3 or 4.
I posted candids on the viewing stations and on the internet. Lots of people looking and some actually buying. I think candids and ring shots will eventually catch on enough to justify doing them. I made a commitment to do candids at every show this year. I'll do that to give it a good test.
The trip over and back was good but not great. We had snow falling until we reached McBride. It stopped snowing but was overcast all the way to Calgary. Mostly the same on the way back.

I got an email from PG Kennel club on Boxing day. We now have the PG show for 2007. What a great surprise!
We've got to continue providing the best customer service. I had 99 % of the photos out within a week of the Calgary show. I am fine tuning the workflow and getting it faster all the time.

Next show in Calgary - Dec 1,2 & 3

2006-11-16T09:43:00.000-08:00

2007 is going to be a good year. We now have five shows to do and maybe a couple of more.
We're off to Calagary on Nov 30th for a show on Dec 1,2 & 3. It's going to be exciting as this is the first time using the new viewing stations. I had some problems setting up the networking and file naming but after help from the software company and lots of trial photos everything looks good.
The viewing stations should help a lot with ordering and customer service.
I'm going to post some photos after the show.

2006-11-07T09:15:00.000-08:00

First try at posting a photo

And now at the bottom of the post.