Glamour Portrait Photographer: Before you go to work in any town, check with the local authorities to find out whether you need a license to do business. Usually no license will be required, or one can be had for a few dollars.
If you don't want to do baby pictures, which is the surest and easiest specialty, you might specialize on portraits. One photographer, working out of Los Angeles, has set up a complete glamour portrait business in a trailer, complete with movable spotlights for careful Lighting effects, and has been so successful that he often finds it profitable to stay in the same town for weeks at a time.
The plan works this way. You go to some supermarket owner or manager, timing your visit to hit when he or she is looking for something new that will capture the imagination of customers who have become jaded with the promotions that have been used.
You lay it on the line in these words: "With portrait dollars, your customers will receive a prized portrait made by a professional photographer living in your community. This photograph will become more valuable with the passing years and will be a source of recurring good will for you as visitors for the harvest. Surveys disclose that a small percentage of people in this age group are photographed in any one year.
Here, again, the photographer will need a strong "motivator" to get these people before the camera. Very few will come in on their own.
And at a moderate price he can sell them a frame for the enlargement. Again he shows a sample which helps the parents to visualize their favorite shot of Junior given the same treatment as the sample. Altogether, these items add up to an order which many a specialist in the more glamorous fields of photography might envy.
A case in point is the experience of John Reed, the famous Hollywood glamour portrait photographer. Reed had captured a fabulous clientele among the motion picture stars before he ever became interested in child portraiture. It was standard practice for the rising starlet, or for the still-to-be-discovered young beauty hoping to become a starlet, to have a set of Reed pictures taken for impressing casting directors and for publicity. As you might surmise, Reed did very well.
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Photography
