Page 18 - Capture Nov-Jan 2021

a look back at 2020 wedding & portrait
One of Tunney’s businesses, All Grown Up Wedding Photography, decided to offer ‘intimate’ wedding packages for a limited time to get through a forever changing time. “Couples just weren’t booking ten-hour packages, and we didn’t blame them. Many were choosing to opt for a wedding celebration of under thirty people, maybe an intimate dinner at their fave restaurant, and a few meaningful portraits with their favourite people,” she notes. Tunney also used this time wisely to shape up the business, revisiting contracts, updating galleries, fine tuning its CRM, and creating a brand refresh.
“Look, to be honest, some of us don’t truly know when we will be earning ‘real’ money again,” Tunney states. “So, perhaps the only thing wedding photographers are currently purchasing is a new bottle of gin every fortnight,” she concludes. “The new world of weddings will have to adapt. I feel couples will strip back a lot of ‘fluff’ and, hopefully, get back to what truly matters. The big weddings may not be possible in the current climate for quite some time. The industry will just have to adapt to that and, I have to say, I’m into it!”
Overcoming uncertainty
This year, the greatest challenge for Perth wedding photographer James Simmons has been the uncertainty surrounding COVID restrictions on events. “Back in March, it was chaos with everyone postponing or cancelling, and having to try and reschedule. As things became
COVID-normal, we saw a number of clients looking to change their whole wedding to be in line with restrictions.” Being able to identify what the new wedding situation looks like and pivoting to provide a service to suit has been his crucial to his business.
Simmons noticed a trend towards people having small, simple weddings, despite being allowed full numbers in West Australia with the two metre square rule. “It feels like people are starting to be resigned to the fact that interstate and international guests may not be able to travel for years potentially. If they can’t have everyone they love there, the tendency is to keep the event quite modest,” he says. Most of his big weddings were postponed in the hope that things got back to normal.
Simmons’ business also adapted to a shift in what people wanted to buy as they became more tech savvy during lockdown. “People are not super fussed on USBs anymore. They are old tech anyway, and half my clients probably couldn’t even use a USB3 connection with their current computers. Downloads seem to be enough for people, and if you have a system that makes accessing and sharing images via mobile easy, you are on a winner. Online systems that make it easy for clients to purchase albums and prints after the wedding were awesome for us over lockdown too.” And a new product emerged, the home-visit documentary. “It's a humble and authentic experience for families, which I’m loving over the studio-style set up – finding beauty in mundane spaces and exploring real connection. Simmons began to provide packages for people specifically having small and home weddings. “They are a pared back, limited coverage deal that potentially appeals to people who perhaps weren’t ever going to have professional photos, but now because some family can’t make it, the value of having it captured well becomes a bigger priority,” he explains. He adds that providing a guarantee for date changes and refunding deposits, or coverage by associate photographers has helped with client confidence as well.
Re-evaluating what matters
ACT portrait photography business Heartstory had two huge challenges this year say its owners, Jeremy Byrnes and Katie Kolenberg. “First were the bushfires, which came so close to Canberra we could see the flames on the hills near our most southern suburbs, and then of course COVID. Both have affected consumer sentiment and lost us bookings and revenue,” they state. COVID’s lockdown forced Heartstory to shut down its studio for seven weeks early in the year. “However, the impact for us and many portrait photographers hasn't been as long-lasting as it has for wedding photographers, or for those in Victoria. As soon as restrictions eased, we were able to get back to business, with some new practices and habits, like extra hygiene precautions and physical distancing.” They spent lockdown working on marketing to ensure they were ready to press go as soon as they were allowed. “That was the best thing we could have done to ensure a quick recovery,” they note. “The biggest perceived ‘threat’ from the situation post-lockdown was that clients might not want to spend money on luxuries like family portraits, but it seems that the opposite has happened. We have found many customers have been more generous with spending than before the COVID lockdowns.
When lockdown hit and Heartstory still had clients booked in for in-person purchasing appointments, they switched to Zoom meetings to fulfil this part of their business. “We were nervous that it would inhibit our clients’ experience and therefore their investment, but our average spend was exactly the same as it was when doing in person appointments. We also, like many, added an online gallery portal to our ‘after sales’ service to create a passive income for ourselves, which hasn’t proven to be greatly successful, but it’s still an extra trickle,” they add. While Zoom sales sessions gained a
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