Expert Advice
From promotion to production, the Agency Atlanta offers a wide range of consulting services for commercial photographers.
Photo Editing
A cohesive photographic identity makes it clear what kind of assignments you’re interested in (and capable of), and it gives clients the confidence to hire you. We can help identify the photographs that support your core brand, then categorize, edit and sequence them for maximum impact. Whether you’re in need of a second opinion on your current edit, a set of portfolios designed and built from scratch, or a complete overhaul – we can help. We have extensive experience creating customized print portfolios from start to finish. And we can work with you on image selection for business cards, print and email pieces, contest entries, or regular maintenance of online source books.
Web Portfolio Edit
A cohesive photographic identity makes it clear what kind of assignments you’re interested in (and capable of), and it gives clients the confidence to hire you. We can help identify the photographs that support your core brand, then categorize, edit and sequence them for maximum impact. Whether you’re in need of a second opinion on your current edit, a set of portfolios designed and built from scratch, or a complete overhaul – we can help. We have extensive experience creating customized print portfolios from start to finish. And we can work with you on image selection for business cards, print and email pieces, contest entries, or regular maintenance of online source books.
Web Portfolio Edit
Our photo editors can create a web edit that best represents you and your brand. After reviewing your existing website, one of our photo editors will have a conversation with you to reconcile your skills and interests with the opportunities in the marketplace. From there, they will evaluate approximately 500 of your images, narrowing them down to the ones that will portray you in the best possible light. They’ll choose appropriate categories, select pictures for each category and sequence them. Two rounds of revisions are included.
Print Portfolio Edit
We can edit your print portfolio in a way that will resonate with clients that are appropriate for you. After reviewing your website and existing print portfolio, one of our photo editors will have a conversation with you to reconcile your skills and interests with the opportunities in the marketplace. Additionally, we will make recommendations on paper, bindings and other production elements. Then, we will evaluate approximately 500 of your images, narrowing them down to the ones that best represent your brand. We’ll then develop appropriate layout, design, sizing and sequence. Two rounds of revisions are included in a print portfolio edit. Print portfolio production is also available.
iPad Edit
Whether you are using a tablet for your primary presentation, or supplementing a print portfolio, an iPad edit requires a different approach than a book or website. We’ll create an edit, and recommend appropriate software. We can also help you find or build a case, and even implement the edit on your device.
Project Edit
There may be times when you have a project that you’d like to present to a client or you just have a new section of your website that you’d like to have edited. We can take care of it for you!
Website Critique
When it comes to websites, form and functionality can be as important as your actual pictures. We can advise you on how to smooth out any rough edges in your presentation so that your pictures shine. One of our photo editors will review your website and provide you with a detailed written assessment with their thoughts and suggestions. A follow-up phone call is included to address any questions the critique might generate.
Creative Coaching
Making new images has never been a problem for you. But perhaps you need someone to help you channel those efforts in the right direction so they line up with your career goals. Our photo editors will have a preliminary conversation with you to reconcile your interests, skills and the opportunities in the marketplace. We’ll help you select self-assigned projects that resonate with your target audience. We’ll work with you on an ongoing basis to inform and encourage that process, then offer editing advice to help make it a cohesive part of your portfolio.
Also Available
Sourcebook Management
Contest Entries
Custom Publishing
Fine Art Consultations
Print Portfolio Production
Publicity
Let’s face it: photographers aren’t always the best writers. Nothing ruins a great website or well designed promo quite like a typo or grammatical error. So when you’re planning on having thousands of eyes on your marketing materials, let us make sure every word counts. Whether you need a website bio, promo text, press release or just a simple edit, we can help you compose engaging (and grammatically correct) copy that complements your work and helps you attract attention for all the right reasons.
Bio
When a client has a good sense of you personally and professionally, they’ll feel that much more inclined to hire you. A biography is a great opportunity to set the right first impression, and our publicists can help you do that. The process begins with us reviewing your website to get a feel for your skills, style and brand. We’ll interview you to understand more about your personal and professional background, philosophy and your goals for the future. Then we’ll draft a bio that will create just the right impression for clients. Price includes two rounds of revisions.
Publicity Pitch
Let’s face it: photographers aren’t always the best writers. Nothing ruins a great website or well designed promo quite like a typo or grammatical error. So when you’re planning on having thousands of eyes on your marketing materials, let us make sure every word counts. Whether you need a website bio, promo text, press release or just a simple edit, we can help you compose engaging (and grammatically correct) copy that complements your work and helps you attract attention for all the right reasons.
Blog Posts
Need help keeping up with blog posts? Our publicists can help by writing individual blog posts and either updating them through your blog’s content management system, or sending the article to you to publish. We will review the information behind the story you’d like to tell and we’ll help choose the best images to showcase. We’ll then send over a list of interview questions and use the responses to write the post. We will also include alt text information for the images and keywords for the posts for better search engine optimization.
Emailer & Print Promo copy
A clever turn of phrase can be a great complement to a beautiful photograph. Our writers will find the perfect words to help your pictures resonate with clients. We’ll start by reviewing your website in order to better understand your brand. We’ll have a conversation with you to understand your professional goals and to agree on the tone of the promos. We’ll then draft a number of options for you to choose from. Price includes two rounds of revisions. We can also advise you on good subject lines for your emailers.
Also Available
Press Releases
Media Alerts
Custom Promo Copy
Book Copy
Website Copy
Translations
Copy Editing
Marketing
Now that you’ve got your marketing materials in place, how do you get them in front of the right clients? We can help you identify prospects that are appropriate for you and build a customized plan to reach them.
Branding & Marketing Plan
Our Branding & Marketing Plan is a quick and effective way to get a handle on where your career stands and how you might proceed moving forward. It starts with a conversation with our producer, to reconcile your interests and skills with the opportunities in the marketplace. Then, after reviewing your current marketing materials and marketing plan with our team of publicists, photo editors, and designers, our producer will send you an in-depth, written analysis of your brand, our recommendations on how to improve your marketing materials, and a custom marketing plan that spells out a specific course of action that you can follow for the next 12 months to move towards your goals. Finally, we’ll schedule a 30-minute Skype call with you to review that plan and answer any questions you may have.
Marketing Implementation
Now that you’ve got your marketing materials in place, how do you get them in front of the right clients? We can help you identify prospects that are appropriate for you and build a customized plan to reach them.
Branding & Marketing Plan
Our Branding & Marketing Plan is a quick and effective way to get a handle on where your career stands and how you might proceed moving forward. It starts with a conversation with our producer, to reconcile your interests and skills with the opportunities in the marketplace. Then, after reviewing your current marketing materials and marketing plan with our team of publicists, photo editors, and designers, our producer will send you an in-depth, written analysis of your brand, our recommendations on how to improve your marketing materials, and a custom marketing plan that spells out a specific course of action that you can follow for the next 12 months to move towards your goals. Finally, we’ll schedule a 30-minute Skype call with you to review that plan and answer any questions you may have.
Marketing Implementation
What good is a thoroughly researched prospect list, beautifully designed promos and a carefully crafted marketing plan without the follow-through? We can help. Our producers will work with all of your marketing assets to implement your plan–large or small. We can send out mass emailers and print promos, send personalized emails and make targeted follow-up phone calls on your behalf. With an expert understanding of the industry, a bit of elbow grease and a great deal of finesse, our producers can help connect you with the clients you should be working with.
Branding Overhaul
Whether you’re launching your photography career from scratch, or you’re just looking for a new beginning, our Branding Overhaul is a great way to get a fresh start. This package provides you with all of the essential marketing tools you’ll need to communicate with prospective clients, including:
Graphic Identity: Including a logo, digital versions of all stationery items, and implementation guidelines.
Web Edit: Our photo editors will work with you to select, organize, categorize, and sequence pictures for your website.
Bio: Our publicists will work with you to write a bio that will reflect the best version of you and your business.
Website Template Customization: Our designers will work with you to find the best template for you, and then bring it to life with your logo, pictures, about page and contact page.
Blog & Social Media: Our designers will work with you to select a blog platform and two social media platforms, and implement your branding. Our publicists will also coach you on how to best utilize them.
Emailer Template: Our designers will create a template that will allow you to swap in new pictures each time you send it out.
Print Promo Template: Our designers will create a template that will allow you to swap in new pictures each time you send it out.
Print Portfolio Edit and Construction: Our photo editors will work with you to select a portfolio book, complete the edit, and supervise the printing and binding.
iPad Edit: Our photo editors will work with you to select, organize, categorize and sequence pictures for your tablet.
The process starts with a conversation with our team of photo editors, designers, publicists and producers to really understand your interests and skills, and to reconcile them with the opportunities in the marketplace. Once we have a consensus on the idea of your brand, we’ll be able to communicate that across all of your marketing materials in a way that will resonate with clients that are appropriate for you.
List Building
Of all the prospective clients out there, how do you figure out which ones are right for you? A subscription to Agency Access is a good start. But it takes an expert to whittle that huge list down to a manageable number. We’ll look at your website to understand your skills and talk with you to understand your interests, as well as evaluate your current contact list. Then we’ll use our extensive marketing experience to pick 800 – 1000 clients who will appreciate your photography, delivering a list to you that integrates your contacts and produces no duplicates. You must be a subscriber to a prospect list service, or we can do original research, which we can quote on separately.
Portfolio Meetings
There’s nothing quite like face time to make yourself memorable to an important client. But if setting up meetings isn’t your favorite thing to do, we can do it for you. Whether you’re making a trip to the big city or you’d like to arrange meetings in your own back yard, we can help you get in front of the right folks. First, we’ll create a hand-picked list of high-priority clients based on your interests and skills. Then we’ll send emails and make two rounds of follow-up phone calls to schedule meetings for you. We can’t guarantee that we’ll be able to schedule any meetings, as we’re at the mercy of the client’s availability. But historically, we’ve been able to arrange about 3 visits per session.
Project Pitch
Do you have a unique project that you’d like to pitch to magazines? Our marketing team can help get it in front of the right people. Whether it’s a completed project or just in the idea stage, we can develop a strategy to identify the best audience for your project and then connect with them. We’ll start by looking at your project and discussing your goals. We’ll then develop a list of appropriate prospects. We’ll send personalized emails with a description of the project and some samples of your work. We’ll follow up with a round of phone calls to make sure they received the emails and to explain it further. While our main goal would be to get your project published, we have also found that this process is a great way to promote you for future assignments. If a publication does decide to run your story, we can also help you negotiate fees and licensing based on the number of images and how they are used. This process would take an additional 1-2 consulting hours.
Estimating
Whether it’s a stock quote for a small magazine or a treatment for a large ad campaign, we have the experience and know-how to research, price and negotiate just about any project. We understand the value of commercial photography and we know how to structure agreements to give you the best chance at getting the job — and at a fair price. We can scale our services to meet your needs, whether it’s simply to review an estimate that you’ve created yourself, or to build a proposal from the ground up.
Estimates
Our producers have extensive experience creating commercial estimates. We will first talk with you (and your client if you like) to get a thorough understanding of your project. We will then draft a proposal, factoring in the complexity of the job, the photographer’s time, skill and uniqueness, the licensing required by the client, the necessary production elements and overall market conditions. We will review the details of the quote with you and then negotiate (or assist you in negotiating) the final terms with the client.
Contracts
Our producers have created and reviewed a wide range of contracts ranging from editorial assignments to long-term ongoing contracts and even contracts presented to photographers by reps. We can review a document and help you turn legal jargon into plain English, or help you develop a contract from the ground up. Either way, we’ll make sure your interests and rights are well protected, and that you fully understand what you are about to sign, or are about to ask a client to sign.
Treatments
Whether it’s an estimate with a 6-digit bottom line or a smaller project for a new client, you should always consider delivering a treatment with your cost estimate. A treatment is a multi-page document that allows you to elaborate on your approach to a project and supply additional information not typically included in your estimate or terms/conditions. Treatments should integrate your branding elements and typically include a cover letter and sample images, but can also be more complex and include crew bios, a detailed overview of creative and production approaches and references for past clients. Whether you include a lot or a little, a treatment will allow you to convey an elevated sense of professionalism that may ultimately help you land your dream assignment.
Our experienced producers, photo editors, designers and copywriter can work with you to create a branded treatment from scratch, and we can also work with information you provide to compile a treatment with existing content.
Production
Once you’ve landed that big assignment, we can handle the logistics so you can concentrate on the creative. Our team of producers can manage all aspects of shoot production — everything from booking travel, crew, talent, locations, studios, equipment, catering, permits, to working on-site, making sure everything runs smoothly on time and within budget. We have an extensive network of resources and years of experience working on projects ranging from local corporate collateral to international ad campaigns.
Casting
Whether you need a studio casting call or help pulling cards from talent agencies, we have the experience to help you find kids, adults, seniors and even animals (or taxidermy…trust us, we’ve done it before). We have an exhaustive list of talent and model agencies and can cast, negotiate rates and develop model releases for any type of project anywhere in the world.
Location Scouting
With plenty of local ties, we’ve helped clients find shooting locations ranging from community ice rinks to residential properties with pools. We’ve even flown across the country to scout client-supplied locations to help determine the best plan of action for upcoming shoots. If we don’t already know where “it” is, we know the people who do, and can tell us how much it will cost.
On-Site Production
We’ve been there. We’ve done that. We know your wardrobe stylist is a gluten-free vegan and has peanut allergies. We know what time you need to be on set in order to finish the 2nd hero shot before lunch. We know how to communicate with agency and client representatives. We know how to work within a budget. We know how to put together a production book. We know how to keep a man in a bear suit hydrated so he doesn’t pass out, and we know where to get a freshly caught salmon.
Whether it’s a small editorial shoot or a project for a large advertising campaign, we have the experience, know-how and resources to produce any shoot.
Retouching
Retouching has gone from a luxury to a necessity for most editorial, corporate and advertising shoots. Rather than an afterthought, photographers now collaborate with retouchers to produce pictures that a few years ago they could only dream of.