B y M a r t h a B l a n c h f i e l d

“Many people have commented that my work has a fine art feel to it, like a watercolor or oil painting. Given my background, it doesn’t surprise me that this trait carries over into my career as a photogra-pher,” shares Nichole Van Valkenburgh of nicholeV photography. “I find myself thinking of different painters’ works as I frame a session. I have a ‘Ver-meer’ window that I love at one shoot location and a ‘Wyeth’ field in another spot.” She often envisions settings that borrow the feel of specific artists. When planning a maternity shoot she may take from paint-ings by David Linn or sculpture from Michelan-gelo with a Schiavi influence. Says Van Valkenburgh, “Benjamin Franklin noted that ‘originality is the art of concealing your sources.’ ”

Nichole Van Valkenburgh

Pez Dispensers and Disney Princesses

Pez Dispensers and Disney Princesses

Pez Dispensers and Disney Princesses

RADIO

To create signature artwork infused with classical composition and reference, Van Valkenburgh relies on a Canon EOS-1Ds Mark III or a Canon EOS 5D, plus lenses such as the EF 24–70mm f/2.8 L, EF 85mm f/1.2 L or Hartblei 80mm Super-Rotator Tilt Shift lens. “Choice of lens really depends on what I’m shooting. I may change a lens 20 times to accurately capture the look!” Variety of glass, reference and ideas are what Van Valkenburgh feels make an artist. “It’s not necessarily the originality of an idea, but how that idea is fashioned and interpreted.”

Painterly ThoughtsVan Valkenburgh is a Utah-based wed-

ding and children’s portrait photographer with a predilection for contrasts. She draws heavily from lines of classical art, favoring muted colors over saturated ones, and often blurs backgrounds and surroundings to allow the subject to stand dominantly in the frame. If there is no texture, it’s added; if there is some texture, she roughs it up even more. She glamorizes her “funky heroines” with a dose of Italian Baroque and Re-naissance romance highlighted with jewel-toned accents against creamy skin.

“An important thing that keeps me in-spired is working in some personal por-trait/wedding work each month and ex-ploring different artists’ influences. When

you stop learning, you stop growing.” The Internet and a growing online community are two of her greatest sources of inspira-tion. “I love finding an image on the Web and then connecting with the creator or peers to figure out how that photo came into being. This keeps me connected, sharp and inspired.” One current such personal experiment is learning to bring in a larger dynamic range to her photos and include deeper detail in black and white without necessarily creating an HDR image.

Other favored looks include contrasts—brides in alleyways or overstuffed furniture in orchards—and the unconventional. She scouts unconventional locales such as the backsides of buildings, spying areas that gen-erally don’t seem to be prime shoot spots. “This exploration has resulted in some of my favorite photos,” says Van Valkenburgh. She advises, “Be somewhat fearless and ask your clients to trust your vision.”

Her artistic persona and energy natu-rally draw creative types as clients. She photographs roughly three weddings and eight portrait sessions per month. “My brides are generally inventive ladies who want beyond run-of-the-mill. These days I’m particularly fond of one prop—an old aqua tufted Victorian chair. It’s frequenting many of my sessions even though 95 per-cent of work is shot on location.

“My children’s photography is just as fun. I love working with families and feel that being a mother myself gives me a leg up. For one thing, I know how much you can get out of a young subject when you have a good supply of Pez dispensers of every su-perhero and Disney princess. It’s amazing what a 3-year-old will do for a small piece of candy from a Cinderella Pez.”

Making a Market Fit Residing in a rural community 90 min-

utes outside of Salt Lake City, Van Valk-enburgh has neither a vast reservoir of affluent customers nor a significant base of prospects nearby. In fact, most patrons drive an hour or two for a session. “It’s a difficult place to run a business, but I have no intention of moving. I must stay on top of trends and fit the product to the market. I can see that this market is really splitting into different camps. There are those who want traditional run-of-the-mill photos, and those willing to pay for something dif-ferent with that wow factor.” And the chasm is becoming wider. “Great images come from photographers with great technical abilities who deliver just what the custom-ers want; who are inventive and creative. That’s where my business is headed.”

Nearly two years ago, Van Valkenburgh sat down to seriously assess what she

wanted from a business. Work needed to be rewarding and allow for sufficient time with her three children—all under age 7. She wanted to serve a specific clientele shooting families, children and weddings. For background stats, she confirmed Utah’s high birth rate, hence loads of little kids and a ripe market. But she also learned that rela-tively few of these mothers spent much time working outside the house—meaning a low number of dual-income families. Digging deeper she discovered that many moms

were running businesses from home. She slyly comments, “Ever notice the number of eBay stores based in Utah?”

Van Valkenburgh next set about picking services and felt customers in her region would not be drawn to fancy packages. “They’re not looking for bells and whistles, large printing packages or luxury albums. My customers crave a talented photogra-pher able to produce an accurate photo that truly records a person, event and mo-ment—no gimmicks.” She controversially

adds, “This really is the market for the CD/DVD shooter—I bill for time spent shoot-ing, minor edit work and proof sheets. Maybe a customer requests a slide show presentation and on occasion someone will order prints or fine art images for an ad-ditional cost. By and large my customers opt to take the digital image file to a print service themselves. As for wedding or fam-ily albums, many actually make their own book. Scrapbooking is a big deal here.”

Price TheoryWith market profile and target customer

set, Van Valkenburgh turned to pricing. Her challenge was to arrive at the right fee structure, determining that customers really could not afford more than $1000 per session. Since the customer cared most about the actual image, profitability had to come from a low hours-worked-per-client scheme. She therefore decided to price her wedding and portrait packages accord-ingly: Clients pay a flat fee and receive all proof images on CD (wedding packages include some prints and an album) plus a first run of images with basic color/con-trast adjustments minus close retouching. When a client orders an enlargement, Van Valkenburgh does a careful fix. This ad-ditional work pushes work into the add-on category (an up-sell), so à la carte pric-ing prevails. “Turns out this is a hit and

brings great cost savings. I don’t have to choose what to edit and I don’t do close editing. I just open, proof in Lightroom, resize, save and burn. Total time per client, including shooting, editing and consulta-tion, is roughly two-and-a-half hours. My pricing more than covers a desired fee and digital processing. I am earning at least $200 an hour and that’s if a customer doesn’t order enlargements.” Bonus dis-covery: “If I concentrate on the session and don’t push add-ons, the customer later recognizes the value for making that extra investment in professionally produced prints. I can always offer these later for additional income.”

To entice clients to purchase enlarge-ments, she markets products such as high-end art prints with mountings and professional-quality papers difficult to ob-tain through consumer and kiosk printers. “Another key point—I really differentiate between the proofs delivered and the spe-cial art prints,” she says.

A CD Shooter As Good As They Come“Pricing is about two things: market and

time. I want to attract the clientele I enjoy working with, and I want to be paid a good hourly rate.” Aware of demographics, income level and final product, Van Valk-enburgh reasoned the CD photographer is geographically a best bet. Admittedly she

doesn’t earn an astounding amount per client, but it’s an enviable amount per hour for her market—and she’s not spending hours and hours at the computer manag-ing output or designing albums. “Many pros brag about rates charged, but focus-ing on amount billed is only half the profit equation. Sure it’s great to have a high gross, but managing costs is what deter-mines take-home pay,” she notes. “I look at profit per hour, rather than total dollar amount earned per client. A lot of pho-tographers don’t really stop and examine this aspect. The price you charge is only one part of the entire machine. A photog-rapher should look at their enjoyment and find ways to price for their market in order to earn the maximum amount possible.”

The dreaded CD shooter has a reputa-tion for being the photographer with gear-to-go and little emotional involvement. “I know many have issues with this kind of business model and may feel I’m devaluing my work by giving away the files. But let’s face reality, this is how the market is going and it’s certainly a good fit here.” Noting more pluses, Van Valkenburgh says a few operational challenges have been solved. “The order process is far more straight-forward and less time-consuming, plus I spend fewer hours on tedious chores like editing and sorting. I can put more time to doing what I love: taking photos.”

The Right Model For HerSerious research combined with true

soul searching led Van Valkenburgh to the optimal decision regarding what to pho-tograph, how to price and how to market. Having hit upon the right equation, her stu-dio is thriving. With her market too small to support only one type of photography, Van Valkenburgh’s choice to cover children and weddings was a natural. “The peak demand for each market is different, allow-ing me to cover primarily weddings March to August, and mostly families September through December. In the end my revenue stream is about 40 percent portrait and 60 percent wedding.” Her business strategy is paying off: Many of the eBay moms save income from their business operations and are spending profits on a photo session.

Van Valkenburgh does admit that the CD business model isn’t for everyone or every market, but it definitely works in her hometown. “I think that in order to be successful in this business, especially in a difficult market, one sometimes has to be willing to think outside the box a bit and be atypical.”

To view more of Van Valkenburgh’s work, visit http://nicholev.com.

Martha Blanchfield is creator of the Renegade Photo Shoots (www.renegade-pr.com) and a freelance marketing and public relations consultant.

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