Today's Guest: Pat Gaines of Gaines Photography in Mattoon, Illinois
Today's Host: John Bentley
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Pat Gaines Expert PageJOHN - Welcome to VTalk Radio Photography Spotlight. Today's program is sponsored by Morephotos.com. The online total photo sales solution for professional photographers worldwide. I'm your host, John Bentley
JOHN - Today we're in the studio with Pat Gaines from Gainesphoto.com of Mattoon, Illinois. Welcome to the program Pat.
PAT - Thanks John, and John, I want you to correct the name of my town, it's Mattoon.
JOHN - Mattoon, I got my "n" in the wrong spot.
PAT - It's one of those stickler things for hometown people, they'll correct you every time.
JOHN - I'm sure they will. Well you have a unique service you are providing for your customers as a photographer. Can you tell us a little bit about your business?
PAT - Well we have the standard types of photography for most sports photographers. We will try to cover the nitch of sports photography with offering of course or T&I picture day programs for Lees and organizations throughout our 90 mile radius area around our town pretty much, as well as we do action photography. We do that offsided tournaments and all kinds of sporting events.
JOHN - I've been looking at your website, and you have all sorts of pictures on the website that demonstrate what kind of quality you guys produce. Very impressed by the sports action photos. You do something that's called Sportrait Posters, what looks like basically a sports card. Tell us a little bit about what you're doing there and what you offering to your customers there.
PAT - Well our sportrait offering is basically sports users' kind of a generic term that encompasses any kind of a collage of photographs put together with sports pictures so we call it sportrait. Fairly generic term, but nevertheless, it works for us. It's basically a collage of photographs put together in many different ways in templates that we have made up in photoshop and these templates are fairly generic to the fact that we can put photographs of certain sizes into these particular spaces and are quick to make. They are very impressive and the customers really, really like them. We offer them in about 3 different sizes, but mainly we offer them in 16 x 20 and 20 x 35 sizes. It offers customers an upsale, of course we sell a lot of small photographs. That's really the foundation of our business as far as the action photography - the 4 x 6, 5 x 7, 8 x 10 plain pictures, but for customers who want a special gift presentation award or something for a special athlete in their life then they go to a sportraits. Our sportraits basically cover the gamet of the price range from about $40 up to about $170. So really we have a price point for everybody to get a very nice photograph they might like for once again a nice gift for somebody. But it does give us that option to have an upsale which you'll have to have in order to really make enough money at these tournaments to really come away happy with what you've made.
JOHN - Now obviously you do all sorts of photography whether it's family photo shoots or weddings. What are some things a customer should think about when they're going into a photo session?
PAT - Well in the photo sessions of course really the other types of photography that I do, I started out as a sports photographer that was my focus to cover that nitch really well, but from all those base of customers came all the people asking me to do senior pictures, weddings, family shots, so on and so forth. Because I then became their photographer just because I see them so often at many of these tournaments. So from that we basically devised all of our sessions, not so much unlike any other photographer would do, and give fairly generic information to customers as far as what they should bring, what they should wear, you know so on and so forth prior to the session beginning. And basically what we try to do is really give people their monies worth, give them good sessions, and really pay attention to their needs, good service after the fact, all those things I think are what most photography studios will want to do and we just try to do that as well.
JOHN - Now I notice on your website you guys also have a service where you can take people to sites to do photo shoots. Tell us a little bit about your motorcoach transportation you offer.
PAT - Well, like I say, our business is mainly sports; that's where I started, that's where I want to stay with. All this other stuff is just kind of icing on the cake to what I do. So I don't have a studio. I could easily build one, but truthfully I work out of my home, and we have these big trailers we may talk about later in the interview, but so my money is more towards that; however, I have like a lot of people who have RV's I have an RV that sits in the garage basically about 11 months out of the year, and I've thought about other ways to use this RV. Also I get a good tax write off and I thought what other photographer would take seniors and we use it mainly for senior photography, of course we take families in it as well, but what other photographer in our area or anywhere for that matter has a 40' diesel pusher motor home to take their seniors in. It makes it very comfortable them and their families to come on in, get their clothes arranged in their closet, have a bathroom for the girls to put on make up, get their hair right and plus as all photographers know, most senior pictures happen in July, August, September, and I live in Illinois and it's hot as the dickens right here during that time frame so consequently in the motor home everybody stays nice and cool, makeup doesn't run, on and on and on. So it really has become a great asset for me to help my senior picture business and it's grown extensively in the last two years as we've probably grown about 100% just in the last two years. So the motorcoach has really helped and the kids like riding in it obviously.
JOHN - Sounds good Pat. We're gonna take a break now from VTalk Radio Photography's Spotlight. We'll be right back after these important messages.
Announcer - This VTalk Radio Spotlight is sponsored by morephotos.com. The online photo sales solution for professional photographers worldwide.
VTALK RADIO ... we now return you to VTalk Radio Photographer's Spotlight with your host, John Bentley.
JOHN - Welcome back to VTalk Radio Photographer's Spotlight. Once again, we're in the studio with Pat Gaines from gainesphoto.com. Welcome back Pat.
PAT - Thank you John.
JOHN - We were talking about your sportrait posters and all the wonderful opportunities people have to get photographs and portraits and whathaveyou. You have a great site. Sounds like you have a thriving business there. Can you tell us a bit about how long you've been in business.
PAT - I've been in business 6 years. And believe it or not and this may be kind of hard to believe, not necessarily say hard to believe, but I didn't really know which end of the camera to look through before 6 years ago. I, like most people, had film camera or very small digital camera at the time, but I just saw a fellow doing this at a tournament, and I said, I think I can take that mousetrap and make it a little bit better and then learned about photography. I am an artist by trade, by profession, I've been an artist all my life. Went to art school, so on and so forth, so I understood perspective, balance, composition, so on and so forth which is what you need for photography, but I had to learn the technical ends of the digital photography. The digital aspect of photography where it's gone, obviously has helped me considerably moving us forward as fast as I have. Then basically in those 6 years, I made it my business savvy to build my business on more of a business format other than possibly than a photographer might build a business.
JOHN - Now you sell your photographs online through a company called www.morephotos.com. Can you tell us how they have helped you as a photographer?
PAT - Well, when we first started out, we tried several of the different onsite film companies and I settled with More Photos truthfully at the time because of the personal aspects of More Photos and how they help their photographers, once again being a new person to this whole industry, I needed that. I felt as though I was somebody with more photo. They listened to me when I first started. Answered my questions to my needing a thousand question answer, they answered it for me and then as we progressed through time and learned about things we thought me might like the website to do, More Photos accommodated us by bringing those items online for us. Actually, literally developed them for us. They were very interested in helping sports photographers and you know doing more with that nitch of their business and they used us basically for kind of a model to work forward to help not only ourselves, but also other photographers as they came on with their sports. And he continued to do that as I talked to other photographers I know who have gone with More Photo, he has continued to do that not only with me, but also with other people. So really the personal aspect of More Photo is really the biggest thing for me. But beyond that, it's a great site. It works great, all the people there are great. Our website is a good example of the web developing service they have there. Very personal people and they make a great looking site as you can see by our site anybody who goes to it.
JOHN - You said you don't have a studio. You actually go to a site and set up and you have an onsite photo processing lab. Could you tell us a little bit about that.
PAT - Well a lot of photographers never get past the easy up canopy and picnic table or card table type of set up at a tournament, and I think a lot of times their business is driven by the fact they don't look very established while their there. My business experience brought me to the realization that if you build it they will come. I really didn't have any jitters about spending quite a bit of money building a great onsite presence. I call it the wow factor. Once again, that's a clearly generic term, but nevertheless I apply it to what I've done to our onsite set up. We have several different setups we use depending on the size of the tournament or the even we are shooting. One is a 30' setup trailer which is basically nothing more than a cargo trailer, but the cargo type it is, is set up to haul a car in it. So it's a car hauler and then we put a motor sport awning in the front of it. A framed motorsport awning, similar to what you would see at any NASCAR event or large drag race as professional racers have these types of set ups. So we use that basically because of its sturdiness and ability to withstand weather and that's what we set our computers up underneath. Obviously we have a lot of money invested in our viewing stations for our customers, and we didn't want to have any weather be an issue with that. So when we set up at a tournament these big trailers, it is secure and sturdy and withstands weather. Our largest setup is a 50' setup. It's actually two of these trailers put together end to end and then a common 50' awning placed between them. Within the trailer is our onsite printing capabilities which are comprised by Sony dye set printers and of course all of our PCs to take care of the photographs, to proof them and flip them and so forth. And then we put them in a server and that is a custom built software that funnels all the information to our 30 flat screen viewing monitors that customers come up to, look at their photographs, order the photographs, get their order taken care of and it pops out a receipt and sends the information to our printers, they print the stuff and it's out the door in literally as fast as 10 minutes. It can take an hour sometimes, but it's very efficient and we are able to keep up when we go to very, very large national type tournaments where there might be two or three hundred teams playing.
JOHN - Wow, it sounds like you guys have a great set up. People can come get their photography done and walk away with the photos right there on site.
PAT - Yeah they're pretty amazed by it when we say it's gonna come back with your pictures in 10 minutes, we say we're not Walmart. And you know Walmart has kinda set the standard of the hour long you know cause that's where everybody gets their pictures print almost, but we say, yeah, we're not Walmart it only takes 10 minutes here. And they're just like, wow, you know. It's pretty cool, it really does throw the people a lot to be able to have the instant gratification of seeing their photographs right away. And to also get their photographs at really, really good prices so once they get their pictures quickly, with a great price, there's no reason they don't go back to the stands where there are a hundred other parents sitting and say, "my gosh look what I got. I got a great picture of Johnny or a great picture of Susie and it only cost $7 and I got it in 10 minutes, and the other husband sitting around saying, "Mom, don't go over there I know what's gonna happen if you go there. Leave me the credit card." You know I don't care. So really it just all works.
JOHN - Sounds like you've got a great business going there, Pat. I want to thank you for coming on the show today. Could you tell us your website again and possibly any phone number you could pass on to our listeners.
PAT - Sure it's www.gainesphoto.com and any photographers who are interested in calling me for some consultation possibly to get their business running more how they want it, or more efficient, they can call us at 800-500-4599.
JOHN - Once again, we've been talking to Pat Gaines from Gaines Photography. Really appreciate you coming on VTalk Radio Photographer's Spotlight, Pat.
PAT - You're welcome John, thank you very much.
JOHN - We are outta here. Ya'll have a great day. Thanks for listening.
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