November 17th, 2005
Sneak Peek of
Joe Craig’s Seminar Presentation
by
Dana Hill
We are excited to have
Joe
Craig, nationally recognized portrait photographer,
as one of our two guest speakers in Las Vegas. Joe
is helping us pioneer a new kind of campus portrait opportunity
and will be sharing the results and how-to’s from
our test project with
Norman
Party Pics.
To view a “sneak peek” video of our most recent
campus “Ultimate Photo Shoot”, click
here.
Click to enlarge |
You won’t want to miss Joe’s presentation!
His expertise and charisma will reinvigorate you –
no matter what markets you shoot.
The countdown is on for the Dec 2nd registration
deadline for the CCS Winter Seminar in Las Vegas.
Don’t miss taking advantage of our $109/night rate
at the
Hard
Rock Hotel! Click
here
for the registration form and
here
for the seminar agenda.
Steve Foisy will be offering three different photography
training classes – Intermediate, Outdoor Sports
and Advanced. Sign up is required! Click
here
for details and registration form.
Would You Like to Showcase
Horizontal Individual Images on Your Sports Memory Mates?
Looking for a New Sophisticated Party PIc Border?
Click to enlarge |
Check Out These New Products and More.
Sports
All primary sports Memory Mates can now accommodate
horizontal
individual images. We had requests for
this in certain sports, like volleyball, softball and
cheerleading, where a sitting pose is popular with the
female athletes.
Customer specific memory mate layouts do not have this
functionality – please let us know if you need this
modification made to one of your custom memory mate layouts.
Click to enlarge |
QuicPics
The most recent CORE release also included the remaining
sorority group borders (Alpha Epsilon
Phi, Alpha Phi, Alpha Sigma Alpha, Alpha Sigma Tau , Alpha
Xi Delta , Phi Sigma Sigma, Sigma Sigma Sigma , Theta
Phi Alpha) that were not in the previous release in early
Fall.
Click to enlarge |
A new
“Formal Black” party pics border
is now available in Quicpics (4x6, 5x7, 8x10, 10x14).
This new border is a sophisticated option, perfect for
formal corporate or campus event. It’s streamlined
style contains the overlay title on the bottom right side
of the image (crest is not supported on this style).
Grad
As mentioned in the last newsletter, the new grad products
(
borders and plaques) and sizes (
11x14,10x18
and 16x20) are now live with the most recent
CORE release. Please see Denise’s
article
for instructions on downloading that release.
Groups
16x20 and 20x24 are now available in CORE groups.
Grow
Grad Business with Cap & Gown Portrait Sessions
by Brad
Hurley
Looking for another revenue stream from your college grads?
Several Candid Color Systems customers are having great
success with cap and gown portraits at their existing
college graduations. Though not a new idea, cap
and gown portraits allow you to offer your graduates additional
digital photographic services and more products and poses
than just the photos taken at the commencement ceremony.
There are several ways to book the event. Most colleges
have a graduation coordinator, who you can contact to
promote the features and benefits of the college offering
such a
Click to enlarge |
service. Or, some schools host an annual Grad Fair
event that allows you to advertise your services and products
with plenty of lead time prior to the graduation ceremony.
When presenting photography options to the university,
you can choose to shoot the graduates over several days
leading up to graduation week, or you may try to shoot
the grads the day of the ceremony just prior to actual
commencement. CCS customers are using both methods
successfully. Either way, it is important to have
students scheduled throughout the event to eliminate the
"last minute rush".
One customer is allowing the school to schedule the individual
appointments and collecting a sitting fee, which becomes
a fund raiser for the school. Cap and gown portraits,
used as a marketing tool, offer a way to book new school
accounts, or, can be an option for schools that don't
cross the stage at the ceremony.
Most customers that shoot these types of events are making
the most of the Professional Portrait Services (PPS) market,
because it allows them to offer a wide range of products
and services. The PPS market gives you the ability
to offer our full line of retouching services as well
and many unique print sizes, mounting options, finishing
services, greeting cards, and even collages through our
LabPrints software.
Sales averages range from $60 to $120, depending on sales
method and proofing options. The highest sales averages
are being produced by having a sales station and a seasoned
sales person right at the shoot. Pricing is typically
50% to 75% higher than that of the ceremony products,
but discounts are frequently offered—in some cases—if
they place their order the day of the shoot.
Cap and gown portraits are an obvious addition to any
existing grad event, so contact your schools now to determine
how you can take advantage of this great money making
opportunity. Graduation cap and gown portraits will
be discussed in depth at the upcoming seminar in Las Vegas,
so be sure to attend.
Freezing Your Assets, or,
Clearing $1,500 an Hour Shooting Sports!
by Brian
Speers
Generally speaking, booking sports falls into two categories:
either you’re looking to book leagues or you’re
looking to book teams. In either case the process
is still the same: find your contact, deliver your sales
presentation, and—hopefully—book the job.
The time invested in the booking process is similar with
both, but the rewards on a league are much higher because
you are securing a much higher number of athletes and,
in many cases, a league can be photographed in one day
over the course of many hours. Ah, but don’t
overlook shooting just teams as the rewards can be—incrementally—as
high in rewards without a huge investment in time.
Case in point is CCS customer Charlene Barth of
American
Candids in Gloucester Township, NJ. Charlene
is typical of many of our sports customers that, given
the chance, will always take a league over a team but
has also learned over the years that you never turn down
a team, especially when hockey is the sport. Based
on the actual time spent photographing a team, the profits
can be quite huge.
Recently, Charlene had the opportunity to photograph three
hockey teams in the same school district: a middle school
team, and then the junior varsity and varsity teams in
the high school. If you’ve ever shot sports
you know that there is a direct correlation between the
amount of equipment an athlete wears and how well they
purchase photographs. For years hockey and football
have always been the best buying sports teams in any age
range. The other point you need to know about ice hockey
is that it is expensive to play. Between ice time,
uniforms, skates, etc. a typical hockey player can spend
well over $2,500 during the season for the opportunity
to play.
 |
This ice time also plays into the team and individual
photography schedule, especially if you’ll be photographing
the team on the ice itself. The coaches will not
give you much time to fulfill your assignment since your
photography is taking away from their practice time.
Ice time is expensive and an extremely valuable commodity
in the world of ice hockey!
Keeping that in mind, Charlene knew that photographing
the three teams would be a quick shoot with no extra time
to do any sophisticated lighting, or varied posing.
“It’s important”, says Charlene, “to
make sure you are wearing rubber-soled shoes if you will
be on the ice taking photographs. Otherwise, you
could create an unfortunate situation for your equipment,
or end up shooting from a sitting position if you fall.”
For this assignment Charlene shot with a Nikon
D70 and a Metz CL 3.
Here is what Charlene accomplished in a half-hour’s—that’s
30 minute’s—time. She photographed 3
teams of 18 players each, or 54 players. For each
player she shot two poses of each making sure she got
one good shot, knowing full well that retakes for hockey
can be a huge hassle. For each individual shot she
was careful to take full-length poses making sure to show
all the special pads, gloves, sticks, etc. that complete
a hockey players uniform.
From the two high school teams she secured 32 orders totaling
$686 with an average order of $21.43. And from the
middle school team she collected 15 orders totaling $514
with an average order of $34.26 per player (60% higher
than the high school team per player average) for a total
of $1,200 revenue for all three teams. With lab
costs of $444 Charlene managed to clear $756, for a 63%
profit margin. Not too shabby for 30 minutes of
her time!
Lesson learned: You don’t always need to book a
league to make sports a profitable proposition.
Working by yourself even for a half-hour a day you can
make sports a very profitable opportunity.
Says Charlene, “On the whole if I could work for
30 minutes a night and realize $800 profit three nights
a week, I’d give up buying lottery tickets”!
CORE Proms Version 2.28.3
is now available for download!
by Denise
Mangiante
UPGRADE NOTES:
1 COREAGENT: Stop COREAgent and confirm that the you do
not have the "Services" menu open. Close it
if open.
2 BACKUP: BACKUP YOUR DATA!!!
3 UPGRADE: Download and run CORE Server
Update
2.28.3.exe.
4 REFRESH: Refresh your CCS product data after upgrading.
Visit CORE->Setup->Products->Refresh Objects
This version also includes new GRAD products. In order
to use these new products you must REFRESH your objects.
2-Up 5x7
10x18
10x24
11x14
16x20
“Slide-In” Plaques
New Grad Bordered Prints
If you would like training on the new version of CORE,
please contact Customer Support.
Select & Post Your “Coolest
Candids” To Increase Traffic To Your Site
by Blake
Whitney
 |
Ed Kempf, of
Joe
Photo in Iowa, was going through the images he took
from bid day, and one image caught his eye as interesting
and original. It was an impromptu picture taken
by his son as a car full of Kappas drove by.
That is how he came up with the idea for “Bid
Day – U of Iowa –
Coolest
Candids.”
Ed selected 15 of the best images, making sure that
each sorority was represented, from his bid day shoots
and created an event showcasing these images for the
girls to see. He even did a little PhotoShop
®
to give the images for the “Coolest Candids”
event a little something extra. He activated this
event the same time the bid day events went online and
since then, there have been 596 unique visits and 921
image previews.
The idea was to make the “Coolest Candids”
into a competition of sorts. Having a picture
selected as one of the “Coolest Candids”
would be something the girls would try to do by being
more creative with their poses. Ed is hoping that
these creative poses result in more sales even if they
are not selected as one of the “Coolest Candids.”
He also realizes that the sales for the “Coolest
Candids” event may not be outstanding, considering
the smaller number of faces in the event.
This idea is a great way to spark creativity in posing
as well as a way to drive people to your website.
This sort of event could be created after bid days as
well as any wave of parties, like formals, semi-formals,
and themed parties that might happen about every other
month, depending upon the campus.
Here are some ways we think you can make the “Coolest
Candids” work, and work for you:
• Make sure every fraternity or sorority is represented
• Display the selected images after sales have
slowed for that period of events, thus encouraging repeat
traffic and possibly, repeat buying
• Have as many “Coolest Candids” events
as your parties can sustain
• Promote the “Coolest Candids” with
your photographers at the event to elicit creative poses
• If you are a QEMS user, send your customer base
emails telling them that the “Coolest Candids”
have been selected and to check to see if they “won”
or made it
• Have fun with it
This could be an easy way to create some more interest
in your greek or college PartyPic
®
market and drive more traffic to your site. You have
already shot the events, now all you have to do is pick
the coolest ones and let people know they are out there.
Thank you to Ed Kempf, of Joe Photo in Iowa, for sharing
his experience and idea with us so we could pass it
along to you
QP1
events will go offline at midnight on December 31
by
Steve
Foisy
Images/Events that require additional display time
should be re-uploaded by the photographer to QP2 order
numbers. Copies of your QP1 images can be requested
through Customer Support for $5 per CD. (1 Order
Number per CD). Contact Customer Support for
additional QP2 training.
Timestone users must use CCS supported fonts
If submitting items in Timestone
for packages or composites please use our supported
fonts. Orders containing unsupported fonts cannot
be fulfilled.
Supported fonts are:
Arial
Arial Italic
Arial Bold
Arial Bold Italic
Avant Garde Blk BT
Bookman ITC Light Italic BT
BrodyD
Cloisterblack
BT
Nadianne
Bold
Times New Roman
Times New Roman Italic
Times New Roman Bold
Times New Roman Bold Italic
Wedding Text BT
CCS Service Times for the
Weeks of 11/01/05 thru 11/15/05
by Bo
Lewis
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