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Ready, Aim, Fire
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Business New Haven
9/16/2002
By: Melissa Nicefaro
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Building relationships and maintaining a steady client base can be key for the person who owns and operates a business single-handedly.
That is exactly how Ann Logan, a Clinton photographer, has grown her business. She began her career as many photographers do: as a freelance photojournalist, working primarily with daily and weekly news publications. Logan picked up photography 25 years ago and during the past 15 years, she began specializing in corporate communications.
Word of mouth was Logan's marketing tool of choice for the majority of her career. But photography is a different business today than it was ten years ago.
“Most of my assignments have come by the way of client recommendations or word of mouth, but lately I am trying to be more visible with Yellow Pages advertising,” she explains.
Logan's photographs have been featured at a local business display at the Fleet Bank in Clinton and in an exhibition at the Cheshire Library. You may also see her work as you're driving down the road. She has done photography for billboards for companies such as Kennedy & Perkins and Subway.
One Subway marketing piece is a photo of Jared Fogle, the man who lost 245 pounds on a diet of eating Subway subs twice daily in 2000.
On the local front, Logan has also worked for SBC/SNET, taking photos for covers of phone books and the inside pages, direct-mail pieces, flyers and brochures.
“They used to be one of my big clients, but they've cut back too. Each year budgets get tighter, especially now,” Logan acknowledges.
She says the photography business is not necessarily more competitive today than in years past, but a photographer is more likely to be given work if the relationship is there.
“If a company needs something done and they know somebody who can do it quickly and correctly, they'll use that person,” Logan says. “When I go to work, I try to stay for the long run. I want to keep that customer, so I don't just give them a big price and never see them again.”
Because she works independently, she relies on the people she meets through the companies she works for. For that reason, she likes to work with the same company for an extended period of time.
“Simply put, it can be nice,” Logan says, “I've made some wonderful friends. Some of my best friends are people I've met through business.”
The work and the friendships don't just land in her lap, though. There are contacts to be made and networking to do. She says she takes any opportunity to hand someone her business card. She belongs to Women Impact Networking (WIN), a local group that holds twice-monthly breakfast meetings, where she and the group discuss particular topics and brainstorm.
As with any business, keeping in touch with old customers is key. And what better way is there for a photographer to keep in touch and market her work than to send photographs to one-time customers? Logan doesn't do much mail marketing, but she does to occasionally send notes to old customers with images that should be kept and framed.
“Oftentimes when I go back to do an assignment, they've framed them and hung them up,” Logan notes.
She says her Web site has also become a strong marketing tool, especially when an annloganphoto.com photo credit accompanies her work. “That way if someone likes it, they can remember easily how to contact me,” she says.
Aside from the Web site, the Internet has opened a whole new world for Logan's business.
“I've been taking giant steps for the past couple of years with updating digital equipment and a computer,” she says. “I'm finding more and more companies want me to do the enhancements. Before it was just handing them a transparency. Now I'm practically designing for people. Customers are asking me to do a little more.”
It's an exciting part of the job, but new opportunities for Logan also mean new opportunities for companies to tighten their belts even more when it comes to outsourcing.
“I have the confidence in my technical and artistic ability to compete with other professionals in my field, but now the problem is that the public relations department will hand over a point-and-shoot camera to “Joe in Engineering” and settle for terrible snapshots,” Logan says. She believes it will be difficult to raise the standards of photography to where they used to be and digital photography is sinking its feet in the business.
“Digital photography has become a way of life. There is no room for dinosaurs in this business; technology is on the fast tract,” says Logan.
“I feel that my career is an unending education. I used to spend countless hours in the darkroom, and hand-delivering urgent photos. Now with the use of e-mail, everything gets done even more quickly, which has always been the nature of my business. Digital color photography has also renewed my enthusiasm for photography I embrace it.”
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