017: Jason Vinson – Posing with Natural Intent & Creating Once in A Lifetime Images

December 15, 2020

“Never stop learning. If you’re learning then you’re adding value for your clients. The more value you add, the more you’re worth!”

JASON VINSON

Hey everyone! It’s Sally here, from Studio Ninja. Today’s episode is all about Jason of Vinson Images – we are really excited to have him on the show.

Check out some of the biggest points from Jason’s interview below:

What are your top tips for photographers looking to develop their candid photography?

The way I shot the family documentary stuff is basically the exact same way that I shoot weddings. And essentially it’s just kind of looking for light. And so that’s kind of my main motivator anywhere I went to, even during the family documentary stuff, if I saw interesting light, then I’d grab the camera. I didn’t have the camera on me 24/7. Just, if I saw interesting light, I’d grab the camera. And if there wasn’t anything super interesting to me, I’d put the camera down.

Obviously you can’t do that on a wedding day, but in general, it’s looking for interesting light and then waiting for stuff to happen within that interesting light. And so that’s just how I approach a general wedding day. But if there’s no interesting light, then I’ll use things like off-camera flash to make it.

I always look for the interesting light, interesting compositions, and then outside of that, I always keep an eye on hands. Hands are always doing something interesting. And so even if it’s a super, not a lot’s going on, this generally happens, like hair and makeup. So there’s not a lot of stuff going on. They’re sitting in a chair, but the bride’s constantly fidgeting with her hands or playing with her hair. And so you can pay attention to these small little minute details that can really, it can make an impactful image, even though there’s not a ton of stuff going on.

How do you handle your post processing after a wedding? Do you do any after sales with your clients?

So after we do the full, I go through and cull and edit and everything, then we have a big reveal type thing. So we don’t just send a link to our clients. In general, we meet with them in person. If it’s a destination thing then we’ll meet with them via Zoom. And at that point, we’ll go through and we have a slide show that we’ll play and they’ll see some images through a slide show. And then after that, we actually go straight into designing their album. And so we’ll do a in-person sales type album design thing so that they can get the perfect album that they want. And then after that, then we do a quick run through of all of their images, just so that they can see everything before I send them the link. And I found that that’s helped because whenever we used to send a link directly to a client, you would just hear crickets. No one ever responds back and be like, “Oh, I love it so much.”

People do, but in general, even if they do love it, they don’t have that mental note to reply that they love it. And so you’re always like, “Well, did they like them? Did they hate them?” And so doing it in person and being able to actually see their reactions and stuff, it’s removed a lot of that self doubt that you feel sometimes when you just fire off a link to someone. And then they like it too, because then they get to experience it with you and you get to laugh and be like, “Oh, remember when this happened?” They’re like, “Oh, that was so funny.”

Well, so, for us, the album is so important because in general, it’s the only physical object that a couple gets to keep from their wedding day. So they spend all this money on a dress and flowers and hair and makeup in a venue and all this stuff and they get nothing they really get to keep. Yeah, they get to keep the dress, but it stays hung up in a closet for the rest of all time, unless you put it on at some point for some reason. But the album is the storybook of their day. And so we wanted to make sure that we put a little bit of importance on that. And so going through this whole entire process helps the couples realize how important that actually is. And then also it makes us a lot more money, to be honest.

So doing upsells and adding spreads and upgrading size and upgrading to leather covers and all that fun stuff always brings in a little bit more money as well. But, yeah. So in general, for the design process, we normally over-design an album and then together, with a couple, we’ll cut the spreads and move images around and stuff like that. And then it also makes them enjoy the album a lot more too because they get an album that they love. And then since we’re doing it in person, we don’t have all that back and forth via email, be like, “Okay, well here’s the next design.” And then they email back and be like, “Can you move this spread and move this image over here? And I’m not sure I like this.” And then you spend more time redesigning it and you send it back and they’re like, “Oh, I want it back the other way.” So there’s just so much back and forth if you do it via email where if we could just sit down in-person, we can knock it out in a couple hours and be done with it.

If you could, let’s say you started your career all over again, Jason, is there anything you’d do differently?

Oh, man. I would probably spend more time getting a good grasp on the business side of things, just as the marketing and even just networking and all that fun stuff. Because when we first started, the wedding photography stuff wasn’t a necessity. It was just this fun side hustle thing that we enjoy doing. And so we just made work and if we didn’t get weddings, then we were fine and we just had a free weekend kind of thing. But starting over, I’d spend a little bit more time on that and a little less time… Obviously the learning how to shoot and like lighting and composition and all that, but all that fun stuff is super important. But at the same time, there’s a lot of photographers that don’t know that stuff very well. And they’re still making a good amount of money and making a good living on it.

So, spending a little bit more time on that business side would definitely help things out. Because I definitely find myself as a photographer trying to make it as a business person. Whereas there’s a lot of people that, they’re business people and they’re making it as a photographer, and it’s a little harder to go the way that I went.

Thank you!

Thanks again to you all for joining us and a huge thanks to Jason for coming on and sharing his so much awesome knowledge!

If you have any suggestions, comments or questions about this episode, please be sure to leave them below in the comment section of this post, and if you liked the episode, please share it using the social media buttons you see at the bottom of the post!

That’s it for me this week, I hope you all enjoyed this episode.

See you soon,

Sally