Mediocre Portrait Photographer: 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.
The biggest profit, then, will come from those clients whom you round up by your own efforts, and you should be extra careful in the work you do for them, to be sure it is pleasing. A satisfied customer not only will come back to you again and again, but will send you other clients who admire his pictures. See to it that each of your clients has several of your business cards to pass around to other photographers.
Really fine negative retouching is an artistic accomplishment much in demand and short in supply. Consequently, those who can deliver it enjoy a perpetual seller's market and thrive like the green bay tree.
At its best, retouching can make the work of any mediocre portrait photographer look like the inspired product of a master. At its worst, bad retouching can hopelessly ruin a good negative. Most retouching as done for commercial photographers of the land is of a very low grade, so ineptly applied to the negative that considerable diffusion is necessary in enlarging in order to make the picture acceptable.
If you wanted a picture, of professional quality, of your dog or cat, where would you go for it? To a portrait photographer or a commercial photographer? Neither of them is equipped to do the job. Your best bet would be a baby photographer, because he has the proper equipment. But a successful baby photographer would turn you down, too, because he is making so much money shooting children that he cannot be bothered with animals.
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Photography
