Changing Gears. A brief blog about marketing for local photographers.

I just got off the phone with a dear friend who started a landscaping business here in Austin, last year.  She's doing okay with her business but like most of us she needs a stream of new clients to keep her business going and growing.  She'd like every client to be a big client  but we were talking about how human nature really works and after mulling it over for a while we settled for doing marketing the way big companies do when courting consumers.  We like the classic model of retail marketing.

The biggest obstacle companies of every size face is getting someone to effect initial trial.  To take active steps to work with your company the first time.  To make the move to buy your product the first time.  And there's a lot of logic to the customer's resistance.  Most things people spend money one aren't really necessities.  If your product (photographs) or service (photography) isn't in the same category as food, shelter and electricity they've probably done okay without it for a long time.  If your client is an ongoing business, like an advertising agency or marketing department within a company, they probably already have a trusted supplier or a list of referred suppliers.  Something may have changed in their situation and you've showed up on their radar as someone who can potentially  add value for them.

The customer may have determined that they'd really like to hire a photographer for their daughter's wedding.  The ad agency may need some photographs for a series of ads.  But there are doubts that you'll need to overcome to get the work.

Since the clients have never worked with you before they will have doubts.  Will they like the final image?  Will it be worth the money they have to spend?  Will you be able to deliver?  If the need is timely, are you reliable?  Will they enjoy the time they'll need to spend with you to make the job work?
Their fears as retail customers are:  Will I get what I'm paying for?  Will I like what I get?  Could I spend this money on something else and have a better emotional reward? (Better cake.  More flowers.  Nicer food. Cooler dress.)

For the responsible party at the ad agency or marcom dept. the emotional reticence is the same.  Will this supplier be able to deliver a good product?  Are they reliable?  Will we get our monies' worth?  And the fears sound something like this:  If this supplier messes up will I lose credibility with my client?  Will I lose the trust of my employer or supervisor?  Will we have time to pursue other options if this doesn't work?

Having never worked with you before all these responses are a natural part of the divining process.  On some level people hate to make bad purchases because it calls their competence into question.  I firmly believe that online product research will (or already has) outstrip porn sites in our society because people are so determined to check in with everyone else and to research each purchase in detail.

So, how do you handle getting in the door?  I'd suggest that you do it by finding a product or service your business supplies that has a low purchase cost and a very high probability for success and offering that product or service to customers first.  The price has to be low enough so that, in the event of perceived failure, the client isn't afraid of taking a risk.  You'll need to finding a pricing inflection point at which your offering value potentially outweighs the risks involved in buying it.

In my business it's the head shot or business portrait.  In the coffee business it's a small cup of coffee.  For a camera company it's 4x6 inch color prints.  I price my in studio commercial headshot sessions at $250.  This includes the sitting, a web gallery for selection and the retouching and digital delivery of a file (in three sizes) for their use in public relations and promotion.  When business slows down I'll have a sale and provide the same service for $199.

Starbucks often introduces new products by sending out coupons for a free, small serving of the product.  It takes away the "what if I don't like it?" fear.  My favorite camera store will do give aways of prints that only require that you come into their store with a coupon.  Starbucks assumes that most people who try their product (and their service and store environment) will like it and come back for more.  They've removed all the risk for you to try them.  The camera store has provided an incentive for people who are interested in photography to come in and check out their store.  They'll assume you've never been to such a good photo retailer, that you'll be impressed by their prices and their knowledgeable staff and that you'll enjoy the experience enough to make them one of your vendor's.

I know that most companies won't blink at spending $199 to get a great marketing image of one of their important employees and I hope they'll have a positive experience with me, with my delivery and with the image.  And to back that up, if they don't like what they see in the galleries, we offer a money back guarantee.  If you aren't happy with my work I'll refund your money or reshoot you for free.  Your choice.  Once they are in the studio they'll see nice work on the walls.  They'll see how I handle portrait sittings and they'll see how well people respond to their new portrait.  They get to see us in action.  They get to see the result for a low financial risk.  We've found the inflection point and used it to get them to effect trial.

Now, when they return to Starbucks they'll feel more confident about their chances for satisfaction if they order a larger, more expensive treat.  Having been treated well and having gotten wonderful color prints on their first visit, the camera store customer will feel more at home coming back to talk to an "expert" about a new lens or camera.  And now that they've had a good experience getting their portrait done at a good price (with great service) they'll feel a lot more confident talking to me about a bigger project.  With a bigger budget.

Each interface with a customer gives you the potential to strengthen the relationship (or kill it).  But in each step you have the opportunity to make them feel smart about their original decision to buy.  And that's the crucial decision for your business.

Consultants in our business love to talk about getting in the door at Nike or a big ad agency in New York but in reality only a small percentage of photographers will play in that rarified arena.  The rest of us need to understand how to work, survive and thrive in second tier markets and with normal, day-to-day clients.  Getting that first yes is critical.  It's the stepping stone to bigger and bigger projects.  And it's the financial foundation for organic growth.

So, when we got into the subject of landscaping we talked about the current reality of central Texas.  We're in the middle of a severe drought.  There's water rationing in many areas.  And the big trees on our properties are starting to be affected, not just the lawns.  And a big tree can add $50,000 to the value of good properties so it's important to do what's possible to keep the trees healthy.  A simple step is to surround the base of your trees with mulch so that when you deep water them the mulch holds in much of the precious moisture for the tree to use.  We decided that people will be slow to add new plants or undertake big landscape projects during the worst of the drought but they would have a keen interest in taking care of their trees.  My friend is putting together an offer to "remediate" effects of the dry weather on the trees by enriching the soil and putting down a healthy mulch spread, with a ringed dam, to retain water and help the trees use it efficiently.

She's determined to keep the cost per tree low.  She'll offer the service to her existing clients and target new people within her target market with a simple mailed card.  The cost point will be negligible compared to the value of the trees.  And the people in the demographic she markets to would much prefer using this service instead of sourcing mulch, transporting it and then working in the 100+ degree heat.  She'll also put together a little paper about proper tree watering as a "leave behind" piece.

Given that bigger landscaping projects can run into the tens of thousands of dollars or more getting people to effect a first trial is a great way to build the business.  It may be basic marketing but I get the sense that most people are looking for the big splash in their marketing and that may just be counter productive.  Fish in a good stream before going out after whales.  It's all about sustainability.  In landscaping and in photography.

Hope you are having a cool, fun, happy Sunday.   I'm heading out to buy some mulch.

P.S.  Once you've gotten someone to try your photos, your mulch, your coffee or your prints be sure to drop them a nice, handwritten note and tell them how much you appreciate their business.  You wouldn't be in business without them.

Creating your own background. Making your own art.

I wanted a cool, warm background for a photo I was working on of four women in wild, bling, "art bras."  I'd be photographing them in a group and wanted something just......crazy....as a background.  So I dropped by the art supply store and bought a square canvas and came home for a little painting session.  Red, with tinges of black mixed in, as a background for warm yellow.  Now, this is just a starting point.  Once you've pulled the background into PhotoShop the sky is the limit.  I played with the background until I ended up with something I really liked and then I tested it by throwing in my favorite singer/actor/model: Selena.  The final background is the result of some motion blur, a couple of filters in Topaz Adjust (Photoshop plug-in) and some quick selection moves.  Nothing fancy compared to what I'm sure most of my readers are capable of doing.  But the cool thing is the idea that you can paint your own backgrounds for just about anything.

I'd show you the Art Bra finished piece but I need to wait on that until the people print it in their calendar.  It's wonderful to have a studio, no matter how small or rough.  At least you'll have a place where you can splash paint around without people fussing.  And you can sit in front of your computer and write blogs while the dog sits at your feet and looks at you adoringly.  Not bad.

Gaussian Blur.

Saturation and motion blur.

Just Plain Nasty.

I went through four Profoto Acute B batteries in three hours today.

I agreed to do something I've never done before.  My kid is a swimmer for the mighty Rollingwood Waves swim team.  Every year they line up whatever kids want to participate and do a portrait of each one with the pool in the background.  They also round up all the kids and do group photos by age group.  In the past they hired someone to do this for a set price.  The photographer would deliver a 4x6 inch print of the individual swimmer and a 5x7 inch print of the age group the kid swims with, in a little presentation folder,  for somewhere around $20 per kid.  They've asked me if I wanted to do this in years past but it's not a niche in photography that I have any expertise in and I was usually too busy so I always declined.  This year the parents asked again and I decided to go ahead and do the job.  I figured 20 or 30 kids would sign up for the individual photos and I didn't have a lot on the calendar anyway.  Maybe I'd make enough money to buy a couple bags of groceries.

So I loaded the car with a Profoto 600b power pack, a head, a 28 inch beauty dish with a front diffusion sock, a heavy duty stand, a thirty pound sandbag, my wooden Berlebach tripod, a Canon 7D and a 24-105L series lens.  I also had 100 sign-up sheets that Belinda designed for me the night before.  I brought along 4 batteries for the Profoto set up.

The shoot happened at 8:30 this morning so I left the house at 6:45, dropped by Starbucks for a coffee and a scone (intending to enjoy them later......) and then headed to my masters swim workout at 7:00.  After workout I unloaded the car and had everything set up and ready to go at 8:30.  When I looked up there was a line of moms and dads and kids and they were clutching the sign-up forms and their checkbooks and jockeying for position.  I had a volunteer assistant who took the paperwork, accepted their checks and helped line up the kids.

The way I organized myself was to have the kid (or parent) write the swimmer's name really big across the sign-up sheet.  Then I would take a test shot of each kid with the sheet in front of him/her.  That way I'd be able to identify any of the kids I didn't know by sight. (Keep in mind that I've been photographing some of these kids every Summer for the last ten years and all of them for the last four swim meets.)  As a failsafe I had a blank on the form called, "reference frame" and I'd call out the starting frame to my assistant and have them jot it in.

Long story curtailed.  I started making portraits at 8:30 and didn't look up or have time to grab my coffee from the car until 11:30.  We shot nearly 180 people, five group and over 800 total frames.  I was twenty shots into my fourth Profoto battery when the last person came through the line.  Nice to be able to click the box off, pull the battery out, shove another one in and get to work in less than a minute.  An hour into the shoot I had to have a parent make an emergency called to Belinda the Designer to bring more sign-up forms.  Thanks goodness she was near the studio.....

The flash was remarkably consistent and the beauty dish with diffusion was just right.  I was exhausted by I had a blast.  The previous photographer shot film and took one frame per person.  If you know anything about the way I shoot you'll know that's not the way we rolled today.  We shot until we got a genuine smile.  That meant a lot of photographer silliness: growling, howling, giggling, jumping up and down and generally acting about five years old.  You know, the same kind of thing we have to do to get CEO's not to look to stiff.

The battery pack system was the way to go.  We used it at almost full power to achieve parity with the sun.  The recycle was three seconds.  Since I used a radio trigger to fire the flash we had NO cables on the ground.  Nothing to trip over.  Nothing for the five year olds to play cowboy with.

I'll send digital files out to the lab.  Wait patiently for my folders to arrive and charge the camera batteries for the swim meet tomorrow night.

In the meantime I'm cleaning up the studio.  I got volunteered to do an art photo for the Breast Cancer Resource Center's annual Art Bra Calendar project.  I've got three or four people coming over to the studio in a couple of hours to model artist's "art bra" creations.  Should be a fun evening.  I don't know what to expect but that's never been an impediment before.

I'm starting to think of my life as........interesting.

My afternoon with Michael O'Brien.

Shot with a real camera.  Not my phone.

Michael O'Brien is a quite a legend in photography circles.  He rose up from shooting newspaper journalism to become one of the "go to" photographers for advertising agencies throughout the 1980's and 1990's.  He shot the original "What's On Your Powerbook?" ads for Apple Computer.  Beautiful people in beautiful landscapes for Bank of America and so many more solid campaigns.  At the same time he's been a regular contributor for magazines from Texas Monthly to National Geographic. Now he's producing art books. But besides being known for shooting for the best in the business O'Brien is universally known (from worldly clients to the greenest assistant) as being an incredibly nice guy.

This Summer he's teaching an intro to photography course in the School of Photojournalism at the University of Texas at Austin.  A few weeks ago he called me and asked if I would come and speak to his students about my career in photography and where the passion and business is taking me now.  I was flattered and thrilled.  Ecstatic, really, when I found out he'd also be buying me lunch....

I threw together two fun books of images and waited for Michael to drop by the house and pick me up.  We headed over to an old Austin favorite, Maudie's, for a quick bite.  We talked about the usual photographer stuff:  The current state of the business.  Whether it would ever recover.  Would it come back in a new form.  (Answers: bad.  yes. who knows?)

Then we headed off to UT to rendezvous with the students. Small class with great kids.  An Architecture student, a sprinkling of  PR and Journalism and Advertising majors.  A pre-Med student and a neuro-biologist.  Michael started the class off by showing the evolution of the cover design for his book, Hard Ground.  Amazingly, superstar designer, D.J. Stout did over 100 permutations of the cover design before he was satisfied.

Then Michael turned the floor over to me and I tried my best to entertain, inform and keep from embarrassing myself.  The class and Michael were kind and told me they enjoyed the presentation.  Michael drove me back to the house and we talked about the one subject that was a leitmotif for the day:  The idea that you can no longer make a living being a traditional photographer.  That going forward you'll need to do more for your clients.  He cited my progression as an example.  I've moved from just taking photographs to writing ads, writing books, writing scripts, making videos and adding marketing services to projects.  We both agreed that people needed to strengthen their secondary skills to really make it now.  Amazing to hear it from one of the giants of the industry.

Talking to students is a blast but it always shows me my weak points.  I'm bad at editing my portfolio.  It's just an assemblage of images that I like, tossed together with little rhyme or reason.  I love telling stories but I need to check in with my audience and not talk about technical stuff they haven't learned yet.  Hanging out with Michael makes me feel like a temporary guest member of an elite and private group.  But when he drives away my membership expires and I have to go back to my day to day existence as just another corporate photographer making my way through the fog.

Random fact:  Michael O'Brien was a philosophy major in college.

Reinvention. Does anyone have the owner's manual?

Curmudgeon:  a crusty, ill-tempered, usually old man.


I caught myself pontificating about the "way photography should be" the other day.  I was railing about HDR or the fact that no one really knows how to light stuff anymore or some such bullshit.  And I had an out of body experience wherein I could look down and see just how silly I sounded.  Anyone who's been in a field of study or practice for more than ten years probably has a certain amount of brain lock  that makes it more comfortable to fall back on tried and true techniques rather than take the risk to take some chances.  And it's probably the thing that stalls more careers and more hobbies than anything else.

There are two important keys to defeating this kind of curmudgeonly brain lock.  The first key is to recognize that you are doing it, giving in to it,  and that your slavish devotion to the same practice, over and over again is dangerous to your potential as a creative human being.  The second key is to break down the barriers that keep you from emotionally embracing new and different and.... go for it.

We like to think that our hard won knowledge, gathered over time, gives us a leg up on the competition.  But we live in now and our clients live in a different mental space than we do.  We may think that they prize us for our Captain Blye-like command of a certain technique but they may, in fact, be using us in spite of our allegiance to that old school dogma.  They may just like the idea that we show up on time and we don't spit on the floor.

I forced myself to take an image from last week's swim meet and play with it in Topaz.  I played will all the filters.  And then I played with them again.  And you know what?  It's okay to do new stuff.  The photo I started with was the classic available light sports shot.  I tried not to over do it but I really like the tones and the colors I ended up with after playing.  And I've come to love the "fade" control in PhotoShop.   But "playing" is the important ingredient.

People often take me to task for buying and selling gear.  For trying new lights.  In every move and shift I'm trying to be aware that I don't want to get locked into a way of seeing just because I already own the gear.  There's a lot of truth in the old saw that says,  "When you only have a hammer everything looks like a nail."  Going forward the cleanest path to creative illumination might be most open to those who own the least gear.  Or none at all.

Re-invention.  It's not just for old guys.  It's for all of us who work in a dynamic, taste driven field.  And it's not just about adjusting to change.  Real artists push the change.  And that means constantly taking chances and not just falling back on what you know.  Because what you learned back in the 1970's might be just as valuable now as a 1978 Chevy Nova.

Dang.  I hate it when I have to admit I'm wrong.


Added edit: June 7 5:52 pm CST. 


This is from an interview on APE (a photo editor) with hot, young photographer, Nick Onken.  He's talking about his philosophy of ABS = "Always Be Shooting."

 I think. So you’re bought into that? That you need to be shooting all the time, because you need to log the hours, the reps.

Yeah, log the hours to improve. On top of that, the reps always love it when they have new work to show, so they can keep putting in front of people.

Sound Familiar?

Here's the whole interview:  http://www.aphotoeditor.com/2011/06/07/nick-onken-interview/

Flash, flash and more flash. Why do I buy what I buy and what do I regret having bought?

You would think that after years of working in the field I'd know exactly what tool to own for the majority of the work I do.  And you'd be wrong.  When it comes to cameras the trick is keeping up with improvements in digital sensors and deciding which increases in megapixels will drive the rest of the market and where it's profitable for you to end up on that curve.  And cameras are a moving target.  Their bar changes.  At least the manufacturers have done a really good job convincing us that we're dealing with an upward moving bar.  I'm not always sure.

In lighting though it would seem logical to assess what you need for most assignments and buy one time. After all, the quality of the photons coming out of the business ends of flash equipment is all pretty much the same, right? Yeah.  That's the way bright, linear people tend to do stuff.... but.

We bought flash gear in the 1990's based on a couple parameters:  1.  We traveled a lot so it needed to be robust.  2.  We used medium format film cameras with slow film so the need for power was a given.  3.  We fantasized that we'd only need to buy new flash gear once every ten years or so.  That meant that the actual purchase price wasn't as big an issue as it is with gear that you replace every few years.

At the beginning of the 1990's (the medium format decade) I'd been shooting with big Norman PD2000 packs for the better part of ten years.  It was old and very heavy technology.  It was cumbersome to change power levels.  You'd switch banks and flip big switches but there was nothing like the rotating knobs that allowed you to seamlessly turn down power.  The heads weighed a lot.  The boxes weighed in at nearly 25 pounds a piece.  In those days you could always bribe Skycaps to look the other way where weight was concerned, but that changed.

I looked around on the market and found the Profoto stuff.  We bought a big box (2400 watt seconds) for those times we still dragged out the 4x5 camera.  We bought a couple of the 1200 Acute systems for all the rest of our work.  Most shoots were still happening in the studio.  By mid-decade more and more shoots were ending up on location and we bought two 300 watt second Profoto Monolights and a 600 watt second Monolight.  I thought we'd never change again.

Along came digital.  Once the cameras stablilized (around 2005) and started delivering clean files at 400 ISO and even 800 ISO the big problem with using studio flashes, especially for portrait work, was not having too little power but not being able to turn the power on a box or a monolight down far enough.

When I worked with the 300 watt second monolights I could only turn them down to one quarter power.  But if I wanted to work close with a big softbox and wider apertures I'd have to McGyver all kinds of diffusion onto the fronts of the boxes.  The 1200's and 2400's sat mostly unused.

That's around the time Alien Bees came onto the market.  They were small and light and had built in fans.  And you couldn't beat the cost.  I bought a set for two reasons:  1.  They could be turned down.  Way down. and, 2. They could be used with an external battery pack, called a Vagabond.  And if you didn't have much of a budget you could still do things with the lights that we would have struggled with a decade earlier.  The downsides of the Alien Bees were the crappy modifier interface (doesn't hold huge stuff well),  the cheezy product design (butt ugly logos all over the place) and the relatively low build quality.  Yes, the light was fine and the service is good but man, you pay the price in aesthetic joy and ergonomics.....

We got so many "funny" comments from clients about the giant bees on the sides of the lights that I started having the assistants cover them with black gaffer's tape.  But the cincher was the variable color temperature at different power settings.  It's easy to make universal corrections but if one light is different than another light in the same scene it can be problematic.  You'll spend a lot of quality time in post production trying to hit some sort of balance.

So, we had Profoto studio lights and monolights because they were bullet proof reliable and we had tons of accessories that fit together.  The mounting rings were up to the task of holding seven foot Octabanks and other crazy accessories.  They looked like real gear.  Clients got it.  And we had Alien Bees for shots of golf foursomes on the 9th hole and CEO on the pedestrian bridge over Lady Bird Lake.

But even with all this stuff we still needed battery powered camera flashes.  They come in handy when shooting corporate events and stuff at night.  If we were shooting Nikon we'd need SB-600's and SB-800's.  When we switched to Canon we needed EX 580's and EX 430's.  Then I started doing minimalist style shoots with the smaller lights and we added more and more of those.  Which culminated in a book project, which culminated in four more book projects.

After a while I got fed up with the Alien Bees plastic construction and the slight color shifts when I changed power and decided to upgrade the tool kit for exterior location work.  There were two front runners I could afford.  One was the Profoto 600b Acute with a head and the other was the Elinchrom Ranger RX AS system with one head.  I started with the Profoto because it's much lighter and, for the most part I've been happy with it.  A couple of downsides:  Sometimes, with bright sun and big diffusers even the 600 watt seconds isn't enough.  And when you use it in those conditions, at full power, you quickly go thru your battery charge (about 100-125 full power pops).  And at those settings the recycle can get a bit long.  I love shooting with the system just about everywhere so I picked up three more batteries and that buys me a lot of comfort level......

After a year with the Profoto 600b I stumbled across a great deal on a demo package of the Elinchrom RX AS with an extra battery and reflector, case, etc.  I snapped it up with the intention of selling the Profoto but now, over a year later, I still have both.

What do I like about the Ranger?  It pops out 1100 watt seconds and will do so 250 times in a row with one battery charge.  Drop the power to 600 watt seconds and I'm good for well over 500 flashes.  That's cool.  With two batteries you pretty much have a full day of shooting covered with no sweat.  And the top panel is all sealed.  All the touch switches are weather sealed.  It's so......safety, safety.

What don't I like about the Ranger?  Well, the powerpack weighs a whopping 18 pounds.  And the way accessories and speedrings attach to the heads isn't as solid and worry-proof as the Profoto system.  And I wish you could leave the modeling lights on for longer than 15 or 30 seconds.

So, when I need to carry lights further than 100 yards from the car it's generally the Profoto system that comes with me.  When I can put stuff on the cart I go with the Elinchroms.  I'm generally agnostic about the quality differences between the two.

Yesterday I was at the camera store getting rid of some excess tripod when I stumbled across two Elinchrom plug-in-the-wall monolights in a Pelican case for a decent price.  I bought them, undoing the conservational steak I had going for about seven minutes with the consigning of the sticks.

So now I'm thinking about rationalizing down to one system.  And it's hard because there's always the nostalgic and emotional context of past use and past reliability.  But I think I'm taking the reverse plunge.  I've long since sold off the Alien Bees but now I think it's time to say good bye to the old Profoto stuff.  I'm packing up the 600e Acute and two heads.  Saying goodbye to the last 600 w/s Profoto Compact monolight and aloha! to the mountain of accumulated accessories.

I can't quite let go of the Acute B (battery system) and head.  I like it so much for locations.

reality. Most of the stuff we do could be done with one small set of monolights and one battery system.  In fact, you could probably do portraits with camera flashes if you wanted to.  I'd miss the modeling lights and the fast recycle and I'd worry about battery packs on a long day of shooting.

I'm not doing very much studio work these days and when I do still life I'm tending to use continuous lights more and more.  So nothing special needed in the studio.  I don't like a lot of different lights in portrait shots; usually just two:  One on the background and one as the main light.  I prefer a passive fill.  More and more I like the look of just using available light.

I guess if I started over from scratch today I'd see how things would work with one big battery system and one smaller battery system.  Something like the Profoto Acute B for the big main light and just a Canon 580 EX2 for the background.  I'd be willing to be I could do a huge percentage of my work that way.

Recommendations  

I spoke to a class last week and I really had to stop and think about my recommendations.  The days of big projects with lots of lights seem to be behind us now.  There's so much to be said for clean 3200 ISO and just little splashes of light.  We don't spend a lot of time constructing big sets.  Even the people who used to do this now shoot most things in chunks and pieces, optimizing as they go, and then let the retouchers assemble everything just right in post production.  To my mind the future is in rentals.  You'll always need enough light to do a good set of portrait lights in this business.  But they can be a small set of monolights with fast recycling and a good selection of modifiers.  Everything else has become specialty lighting and as long as there are good rental sources I'd rather rent than own.

Rule of Thumb


Use it once a quarter?  Rent it.  Use it once a month?  That's a borderline between rent and buy.  If you love having the product around then buy it.  If it's boring but handy, rent it.  Use it more than once a month?  You need to own one.

What Changed?


When we started shooting years ago we shot everything in the studio and everything with flash.  Big flash.  We didn't do video.  We didn't do continuous lighting.  Most studio pros did not also do event/reportage shooting.  Now we do everything.  And it's not possible to own every light for every job that might come along.  The video industry is all about the rental and all the rental gear is billed to the client.  It's part of the job.  Specialty gear is the same way.  We used to shoot three or four days a week, now most shooters are happy to get three or four good, solid jobs a month.  We need less, not more overhead.   We need more, not less flexibility.  Renting makes that all work.

As the economy continues to change we're starting to see adaptations.  The first thing to go was employee overhead.  I can't think of a single photograph I know who still has an employee.  Office managers have become freelance producers or contract book keepers.  All assistants are contractors.
The next thing to go was studio overhead.  No more air conditioning and heating and paying rent on 3,000 whether you used it or not.  Now we work out of home offices and small share offices.  Our office equipment is usually a laptop and an inkjet printed.  Two or three outboard harddrives for back up.  Next up will be all the lighting gear.  There's some stuff that's hard or silly to source.  Like basic light stands and nets and scrims.  And like I said above, you'll want your basic portrait kit.  But to be efficient everything else should be considered specialty gear and rented and charged accordingly.

Judgement?  Nope.  It's not a good thing or a bad thing.  It just is.  If you want to survive in this market you'll have to manage cash flow and manage the resources you bring to bear for the clients.  That means not wasting money on stuff you aren't efficiently using.  It's good to remember that what your client is buying is your ability to problem solve and to deliver a visual product that moves the client's game forward.  They are not hiring you for your gear.  A guy with a Vivitar 285 who can deliver a look and a style that makes consumers hunger for the client's product will get the job based on what's in his book, not what kind of gear inventory is stacked in his garage.

When they removed the financial barriers and the technical barriers to practicing commercial photography the industry re-defined what is important.  All that's important is your ability to deliver the goods.  Nothing else enters the equation.  Elinchrom versus Broncolor versus Profoto versus Alien Bees is a useless exercise if the guy who wins the jobs does so by leveraging available light.  That's about it.
We really do have to sell our vision now.  And sometimes the inventory just gets in the way.

Regrets.  I wasted time and money with cheap flashes.  Whether it was the Alien Bees or some older Sunpak units.  I regret not always being able to say "goodbye" to gear when it's time to move on.  The older Profoto gear worked well but as soon as I hit the wall on not being able to turn it down enough I should have liquidated the collection and moved on.  I regret not getting top of the line battery systems earlier.  I did too much cobbling of stuff together to compensate for either lack of power in the Alien Bees or plastic mounts that stripped or weak mounting hardware for softboxes.  One good gust is enough to wrench off a softbox and rake the speedring across the flashtube.   And I love the water resistance of the Elinchrom Rangers.  Can't imagine bringing anything else along in a heavy fog or a 100% humidity day.

All those are small regrets and for the most part compensated by their inflection on my learning curve.  It's all a building process.

Buy once?  I should be so lucky.  I guess financial competence goes to the incurious.  I always wanted to know what the next system would do.  I guess I could stand to be a bit less  curious.....

Curious about all the lights out there?  We've got a book for that:

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